GIFT  OF 


A  HANDBOOK 


OF 


CIVIC  IMPROVEMENT 


BY 


HERMAN  G.  JAMES,  J.  D.,  Ph.  D. 

Associate  Professor  of  Government  and  Director  of  the 

Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  and  Reference, 

University  of  Texas. 


Author  of  Principles  of  Prussian  Administration,  Applied 
City  Government,  A  Model  Charter  for  Texas  Cities, 
A  Model  Civic  Service  Code  for  Texas  Cities,  What  is 
the  City  Manager-Plan?  etc. 


COPYRIGHT  1915 

BY 
HERMAN  G.  JAMES 


PREFACE. 

This  little  book  is  intendend  to  do  three  things.  In  the 
first  place  it  is  meant  to  show  the  average  citizen  and  city 
official  alike  what  is  to  be  expected  of  city  government. 
Thus,  by  setting  up  an  ideal  to  strive  after,  it  aims  to  edu- 
cate the  general  public  up  to  a  higher  expectation  of  results 
from  its  city,  with  a  corresponding  willingness  on  the  part 
of  the  tax  payers  to  furnish  the  necessary  means  for  accom- 
plishing those  results.  In  the  second  place  it  is  intended  to 
furnish  to  civic  organizations  a  handy  guide  book  for  a  com- 
munity survey  which  shall  set  forth  by  convincing  evi- 
dence the  short  comings  of  their  own  community.  It  was 
this  aspect  of  the  city  government  problem  which  first 
suggested  the  present  undertaking,  because  the  author  had 
on  various  occasions  been  requested  for  assistance  in  direct- 
ing the  work  of  civic  associations  and  clubs  along  effective 
lines.  The  willingness  and  devotion  were  present  for  ac- 
complishing great  things,  but  the  efforts  lacked  direction 
and  therefore  largely  came  to  naught.  It  is  particularly 
with  the  growing  civic  activity  of  womens'  clubs  in  mind, 
and  to  aid  them  in  their  work  that  this  book  is  written, 
though  mens'  organizations,  and  collegiate  civic  associations 
can  of  course  profit  equally  and  use  the  book  to  the  same 
advantage.  In  the  third  place  it  is  intended  for  use  as  a 
laboratory  guide  in  municipal  science  for  college  classes. 

H.  G.  J. 
University  of  Texas,  Austin,  Texas,  1915. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 
Chapter.  Page. 

I.    WHAT  Is  GOOD  CITY  GOVERNMENT? 7 

II.     PUBLIC  HEALTH — Food  Supply 11 

III.  PUBLIC  HEALTH — Abatement  of  Nuisances.  Col- 
lection and  Disposal  of  Garbage,  Sewage,  and 
Other  Wastes.  School  Hygiene 27 

IV.  PUBLIC  HEALTH — Treatment  of  Contagious  Dis- 
eases. Care  of  the  Sick.  Organization  and 
Powers  of  the  Health  Department.... 39 

V.    PUBLIC  SAFETY 49 

VI.    PUBLIC  EDUCATION 60 

VII.    PUBLIC  MORALS 73 

VIII.    SOCIAL  WELFARE 88 

IX.  CITY  PLANNING  .                                              -103 


I. 

WHAT  is  GOOD  CITY  GOVERNMENT? 

"For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest!  Whatever 
is  best  administered  is  best,"  wrote  Pope  many  years  ago. 
As  in  the  case  of  most  epigrams  the  truth  contained  in  the 
saying  is  somewhat  obscured  by  the  evident  exaggeration 
involved,  and  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  a  very 
important  fact  expressed  in  the  quotation.  That  the  author 
believes  that  forms  of  city  government  are  of  importance, 
and  of  very  considerable  importance  is  evidenced  else- 
where.* That  he  believes  the  test  of  good  city  government  in 
actual  practice  to  be  the  manner  in  which  it  is  administered 
is  the  underlying  thesis  of  this  work.  In  other  words  while 
there  are,  in  the  author's  opinion,  very  great  differences  in 
the  possibilities  of  good  administration  offered  by  different 
forms  of  municipal  organization,  the  quality  of  the  gov- 
ernment actually  possessed  by  any  city  must  be  measured 
by  its  activities.  There  have  been  and  there  are  now  cities 
with  forms  of  organization  that  are  evidently  defective, 
viewed  from  a  scientific  point  of  view,  and  yet  the  admin- 
istration of  those  cities  surpasses  in  quality  that  found 
elsewhere.  On  the  other  hand,  instances  are  not  lacking  of 
cities  with  admirable  machinery  and  organization,  whose 
accomplishments  are  nevertheless  of  very  inferior  calibre. 
The  test  of  good  city  government  in  the  concrete  case  is, 


*Applied   City   Government;  the   Principles   and   Practice   of   City   Charter  Making:, 
by  Herman  G.  James.     Harper  &  Brothers,  New  York,   1914. 

7 


8  WHAT  Is  GOOD  CITY  GOVERNMENT? 

therefore,  that  of  actual  accomplishment.  Does  the  city 
successfully  meet  the  problems  it  has  to  solve,  and  does  it 
provide  for  the  welfare  of  its  inhabitants  to  the  fullest  pos- 
sible extent  ?  These  are  the  important  questions  to  be  asked, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  purposes  of  this  book  to  facilitate  the 
answering  of  those  questions  in  every  city  in  which  there 
is  an  intelligent  energetic  group  of  persons  interested  in 
having  that  question  answered. 

This  leads  us  from  the  conception  of  good  city  govern- 
men  to  that  of  good  citizenship.  What  members  of  the 
community  are  good  citizens?  The  concept  is  evidently  a 
wider  one  than  merely  that  of  obedience  to  the  laws,  though 
even  this  fundamental  characteristic  of  good  citizenship  is 
sometimes  lacking  among  some  of  the  so-called  leading  citi- 
zens. Nor  is  the  exercise  of  the  electoral  franchise  the  test 
of  good  citizenship,  for  many  men  may  vote  regularly  with- 
out coming  up  to  the  standard,  and  conversely  many  women 
may  prove  themselves  good  citizens  without  possessing  the 
vote.  In  fact  for  many  women  the  problem  of  playing  the 
part  of  good  citizens  is  a  simpler  one  than  for  the  ordinary 
man  because  of  the  greater  leisure  they  enjoy.  For  the 
test  of  good  citizenship  lies  in  the  existence  of  an  intelligent, 
continuing  interest  in  the  questions  of  good  city  government, 
and  that  means  the  consecration  of  a  certain  amount  of  time 
and  energy  to  the  study  and  investigation  of  the  city's  prob- 
lems and  the  way  in  which  they  are  met.  For  this  kind  of 
work  organization  is  necessary,  and  that  is  another  point 
where  women  have  the  advantage  over  men,  for  the  former 
possess  some  readily  adaptible  form  of  organization  in  their 
social  or  church  clubs,  while  men  usually  find  it  necessary 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  9 

especially  to  organize  a  civic  club  of  some  sort  in  order 
to  make  the  advantages  of  organization  and  co-operation 
available.  It  is  a  promising  development  of  recent  years, 
however,  that  so-called  commercial  clubs  are  actively  in- 
terested in  improving  the  government  of  their  city. 

We  have  seen  so  far  that  good  city  government  in  a  par- 
ticular community  is  a  government  that  properly  performs 
its  functions,  while  good  citizens  from  this  point  of  view 
are  those  who  are  actively  interested  in  determining  what 
those  functions  are,  in  seeing  if  they  are  being  performed, 
and  in  insisting  that  if  they  are  not  matters  should  be  im- 
proved. Evidently  the  first  step  to  be  taken  is  the  deter- 
mination of  what  activities  the  city  should  engage  in  if  it 
claims  to  be  a  good  instrument  for  the  satisfaction  of  social, 
that  is,  in  this  case,  municipal  needs.  Now  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent, of  course,  the  importance  and  the  very  nature  of  the 
community  needs  will  vary  with  the  size  of  the  city.  On 
the  other  hand  certain  fundamental  needs  exist  in  every 
city  which  has  grown  beyond  the  village  stage  and  the 
corresponding  functions  of  the  city  government  will  vary 
in  magnitude  rather  than  in  quality  according  to  the  size 
of  the  city.  These  fundamental  municipal  concerns  will  be 
considered  under  the  following  heads;  health,  safety,  mor- 
als, education,  social  welfare,  and  civic  beauty.  These  as- 
pects of  municipal  life  are  not  only  the  most  important  to 
the  average  citizen  as  well  as  to  the  community  as  a  whole, 
but  they  are  also  the  ones  which  are  most  easily  subjected  to 
the  inspection  and  control  of  the  average  lay  citizen  who  is 
not  in  a  position  to  judge  so  easily  of  the  efficiency  of  the  le- 
gal, engineering  and  financial  aspects  of  the  city  adminis- 


10  WHAT  Is  GOOD  CITY  GOVERNMENT? 

tration.  After  pointing  out  the  various  subjects  that  arise  in 
connection  with  these  different  fields  of  municipal  activity 
and  showing  what  may  be  expected  of  a  good  city  govern- 
ment in  their  regard,  there  will  follow  in  each  chapter  a  set 
of  definite  questions  to  be  answered  by  actual  investigation 
of  the  city  in  which  the  reader  lives,  tending  to  facilitate 
the  answering  of  the  question  how  far  short  the  given  city 
government  falls  of  what  it  should  accomplish.  With  these 
two  fundamental  inquiries  answered,  the  good  citizenship 
of  a  community  may  be  counted  on  to  see  to  it  that  the  defi- 
ciencies are  remedied  as  rapidly  as  resources  will  permit. 


II. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH. 

Food  Supply. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  the  municipal  functions 
to  be  considered,  and  the  one  perhaps  that  touches  the  av- 
erage citizen  most  closely  in  his  every  day  life,  is  the  care 
of  the  sanitary  conditions  of  the  community.  It  is  in  large 
part  owing  to  the  conditions  created  by  city  life  that  the 
public  health  problem  becomes  a  serious  one  and  therefore 
it  is  an  evident  duty  of  the  city  to  guard  its  inhabitants 
against  the  dangers  inherent  in  the  congested  conditions  of 
urban  life.  Municipal  activities  in  the  interest  of  public 
health  date  back  a  long  time  in  the  history  of  cities,  but 
it  is  only  in  recent  times  that  really  effective  measures  for 
safeguarding  the  health  of  urban  communities  have  been 
developed  and  applied.  In  former  times  the  chief  and  fre- 
quently the  only  phase  of  public  health  activities  in  the 
cities  was  that  of  fighting  epidemics  of  contagious  diseases 
and  preventing  their  spread.  To-day  the  main  emphasis 
in  the  work  of  an  efficient  city  health  department  is  placed 
on  preventing  disease  by  eliminating  insanitary  conditions, 
and  so  in  reducing  the  necessity  for  curative  measures. 

We  may  consider  the  proper  health  activities  of  the  city 
therefore  under  two  general  heads,  those  which  are  pre- 
ventive and  those  which  deal  with  disease  when  it  has  al- 
ready developed  though  of  course  in  actual  practice  the  two 

11 


12  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

phases  are  not  and  cannot  be  absolutely  separated.  Under 
the  first  head  we  may  group  the  purity  of  the  food  supply, 
the  abatement  of  nuisances,  the  disposal  of  garbage  and 
sewage,  and  school  hygiene.  Under  the  second  head  we 
may  consider  separately  the  protection  against  the  spread 
of  contagious  diseases,  and  the  care  of  the  indigent  sick, 
completing  the  consideration  of  the  public  health  functions 
of  the  city  by  a  discussion  of  the  proper  form  of  organiza- 
tion and  powers  of  the  department  of  health. 

Food  Supply.  Chief  among  the  preventive  hygienic  meas- 
ures a  city  should  adopt  is  the  regulation  and  inspection  of 
the  food  supply  of  its  citizens,  for  it  is  through  improper 
food  that  much  of  the  city's  sickness  is  caused.  Under  this 
head  must  come  in  the  first  place  the  water  supply,  for  of 
all  articles  of  food  it  is  the  most  generally  used  and  there- 
fore the  most  dangerous  if  polluted.  For  years  it  has  been 
known  that  an  impure  water  supply  inevitably  introduces 
such  diseases  as  typhoid  fever  and  many  cities  therefore 
have  realized  the  need  of  providing  pure  water  at  any  cost. 
Unfortunately,  however,  in  a  great  many  cities  even  this 
fundamental  matter  of  a  pure  water  supply  has  been  neg- 
lected to  the  great  detriment  of  the  city's  health.  The  first 
consideration  with  regard  to  the  city's  water  supply  is  its 
source.  The  purity  of  that  source  can  easily  be  determined 
by  bacteriological  and  chemical  examination  and  a  continual 
watch  should  be  exercised  by  those  means  through  the  city's 
health  department  in  order  to  make  sure  that  the  source  re- 
mains pure.  So  far  as  the  city  has  jurisdiction  over  the 
source  of  supply  it  should  prevent  all  possibility  of  pollu- 
tion, and  so  far  as  it  is  exposed  to  pollution  of  the  supply 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  13 

by  agencies  over  which  it  has  no  control,  it  should  appeal 
to  the  state  for  protection  against  such  agencies  and  safe- 
guard itself  by  the  installation  of  an  adequate  filtration 
plant.  Deep  wells  are  usually  likely  to  offer  a  source  of  pure 
water,  while  water  courses  will  seldom  yield  a  pure  supply, 
unless  there  are  no  sources  of  contamination  located  along 
the  stream  above  the  place  where  it  is  used.  This  is  of 
course  not  usually  the  case.  The  intimate  relation  between 
the  purity  of  the  city's  water  supply  and  the  health  of  its 
inhabitants  and  the  need  of  absolute  control  as  well  as  the 
important  uses  of  water  by  the  city  itself  for  street  cleaning 
and  fire  protection  make  it  of  the  greatest  importance  for  a 
city  to  own  and  operate  its  water  works.  The  first  care  of  a 
city  in  acquiring  public  services  should  therefore  be  to  es- 
tablish and  maintain  its  own  water  works. 

Having  secured  for  itself  an  adequate  supply  of  pure 
water,  and  that  is  unquestionably  the  matter  of  chief est 
concern  to  a  city  from  the  public  health  stand  point,  the 
next  care  should  be  the  elimination  of  other  sources  of 
water  likely  to  be  dangerous  to  the  public  health.  Such 
sources  are  commonly  found  in  surface  wells  and  in  cisterns, 
and  if  the  city  performs  it's  duty  by  providing  an  adequate 
supply  of  pure  water  at  small  cost  to  consumers,  there  is 
no  need  for  permitting  these  other  sources  of  drinking 
water  to  exist,  especially  as  they  may  constitute  a  menace 
to  public  health  even  when  not  used  as  sources  of  drinking 
water,  as  will  be  noted  later  on.  Of  course  the  city  itself 
must  store  and  distribute  its  water  in  such  a  way  as  not  to 
permit  of  pollution  in  reservoirs  and  conduit  pipes  which 


14  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

problem  presents  no  great  difficulties,  though  even  this  point 
is  not  infrequently  neglected. 

Adequacy  of  supply  is  an  important  item  in  the  inter- 
ests of  public  health,  because  water  is  not  merely  a  necessity 
of  life  as  an  article  of  bodily  consumption,  but  also  as  the 
most  efficient  cleansing  medium,  and  the  relation  between 
cleanliness  and  good  health  is  a  matter  of  common  knowl- 
edge. It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  here  that  the  city  itself 
needs  a  copious  source  of  water  for  cleaning  its  streets,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  importance  of  a  high  pressure  water  sup- 
ply for  fire  protection,  but  it  is  well  to  emphasize  the  need 
of  supplying  a  reasonable  minimum  of  water  to  every  in- 
habitant of  the  city  at  a  cost  which  even  the  poorest  will  be 
able  to  pay,  that  is,  free  if  need  be.  Beyond  this  minimum 
requirement  for  drinking  and  cleansing  purposes,  the  city 
might  properly  make  a  graduated  consumption  or  meter 
charge,  to  prevent  waste  in  one  of  the  most  important  of  the 
city's  possessions. 

Next  in  importance  to  a  pure  water  supply  for  the 
city  is  the  provision  of  a  pure  milk  supply,  for  while  impure 
water  is  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  the  high  death  rate 
of  cities  impure  milk  causes  that  most  disgraceful  of 
the  city's  short  comings,  a  high  infant  mortality.  It  is, 
therefore,  the  duty  of  the  city  to  exercise  the  most  rigid 
inspection  and  control  over  all  milk  sold  in  the  city,  and  to 
insure  a  pure  milk  supply  for  babies  at  reasonable  rates 
to  the  persons  unable  to  pay  what  the  dealers  demand. 
Indeed  in  view  of  the  universality  of  milk  consumption  (it 
being  of  course  a  necessity  for  infants),  the  serious  conse- 
quences of  carelessness  in  the  sanitary  conditions  surround- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  15 

ing  the  production  and  distribution  of  milk,  and  the  diffi- 
culty of  adequate  inspection,  there  would  appear  to  be  al- 
most the  same  reason  for  regarding  the  city's  milk  supply 
as  a  proper  municipal  undertaking  as  exists  in  the  case 
of  the  water  supply,  which  is  in  nearly  all  cities  a  munici- 
pally owned  utility.  At  any  rate  municipal  milk  stations 
for  pure  baby's  milk  should  be  maintained.  Whether  owned 
by  the  city  or  not,  the  business  of  supplying  milk  should  be 
carried  on  under  certain  safeguards  well  recognized  as 
essential  to  the  proper  protection  of  the  public  health.  At 
the  very  outset  there  should  be  a  careful  and  repeated  in- 
spection of  the  herds  from  which  the  milk  is  secured.  This 
will,  in  large  cities,  usually  necessitate  inspection  by  city 
officials  outside  of  the  territorial  jurisdiction  of  the  city,  and 
so  far  as  not  adequately  performed  by  state  or  county  offi- 
cials, could  be  enforced  only  by  making  submissions  to  such 
inspection  a  condition  of  granting  the  license  to  sell  milk 
in  the  city.  This  inspection  of  cattle  used  for  milking 
should  be  directed  towards  the  detection  of  diseases  in  the 
cattle  likely  to  affect  injuriously  the  milk  supplied.  The 
most  common  and  dangerous  of  such  diseases  is  tuberculosis, 
which  can  readily  be  detected  by  the  common  tuberculin 
test.  The  proper  feeding  and  housing  of  cows  is  essential 
to  keeping  them  in  the  best  condition  for  giving  wholesome 
milk. 

After  ensuring  that  the  milk  conies  from  healthy  cows 
the  next  consideration  is  to  see  that  it  does  not  become 
contaminated  with  filth  and  with  disease  microbes  in  the 
process  of  milking  and  handling  in  the  dairies.  To  this  end 
the  washing  of  the  cows'  udders,  the  cleaning  of  milkers' 


16  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

hands,  the  cleansing  of  the  barn  floors,  the  screening  of  the 
milking  barns  against  flies,  the  sterilization  of  the  recepta- 
cles, the  protection  of  the  milk  from  dust  and  dirt,  and  the 
cooling  of  the  milk  are  all  essential  operations.  These  sani- 
tary measures  are  almost  obvious,  except  perhaps  the  re- 
quirement with  regard  to  the  cooling  process  which  is  meant 
to  retard  the  multiplication  of  germs,  which  increase  at 
an  incredible  rate  in  warm  milk.  If  milk  is  to  be  shipped 
or  carried  for  any  distance  it  must  in  the  same  way  be  kept 
at  a  low  temperature  by  the  use  of  ice  if  it  is  to  be  in  fit 
condition  for  delivery.  As  the  important  period  to  test 
milk  from  the  public  health  point  of  view  is  when  it  is 
delivered  to  the  customer  there  should  be  continuous  careful 
inspection  by  means  of  samples  taken  from  wagons  on  their 
delivery  route,  and  in  milk  stations  from  the  receptacles 
from  which  the  milk  is  taken  upon  being  sold.  The  milk 
should  be  bottled  in  tightly  closed,  thoroughly  sterilized 
bottles,  and  in  no  case  should  there  be  any  pouring  of  milk 
from  one  receptacle  to  another  after  bottling.  The  practice 
of  watering  milk,  which  can  also  easily  be  controlled  by  fre- 
quent inspection  of  samples,  is  not  merely  a  fraud  upon 
customers,  but  is  also  a  frequent  source  of  disease  when 
the  water  used  for  that  purpose  is  impure,  as  is  frequently 
the  case.  Another  abuse  to  be  guarded  against  by  inspec- 
tion is  the  use  of  preservatives,  which  apparently  keep  the 
milk  from  spoiling,  but  in  fact  make  it  most  injurious  to 
health.  Finally,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  the  inspection 
of  the  employees  engaged  in  handling  the  milk  to  guard 
against  their  having  contagious  diseases  that  might  be 
communicated  through  the  milk  is  an  important  considera- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  17 

tion.  Obviously  the  effectiveness  of  all  this  inspection  de- 
pends upon  the  existence  of  an  adequate  corps  of  inspectors 
so  that  violations  of  the  milk  ordinances  cannot  occur  with- 
out a  considerable  risk  of  detection.  That  the  ordinances 
themselves  should  cover  all  of  the  points  mentioned  and 
have  penalties  of  a  sufficient  severity  attached  so  that  it 
could  not  possibly  be  profitable  to  violate  the  ordinances 
and  pay  the  small  fines  is  obvious. 

Closely  connected  with  both  the  water  supply  and  the 
milk  supply,  as  indeed  in  other  connections  also  with  the 
food  supply  in  general,  is  the  condition  of  the  city's  ice  sup- 
ply. The  ice  supply  is  connected  with  the  water  supply  in 
that  ice  is  largely  used,  in  the  summer  especially,  to  cool 
water  and  other  drinks,  by  placing  it  in  the  water  or  bever- 
age where  it  melts  and  becomes  part  of  the  same.  Obviously 
it  is  of  no  use  under  those  conditions  to  have  the  water 
pure  and  the  ice  impure,  for  the  resulting  mixture  will  be 
impure.  The  purity  of  the  ice  sold  becomes,  therefore,  a 
matter  of  proper  and  necessary  control  by  the  city.  The 
supply  of  ice  and  its  sale  at  reasonable  prices  is,  however, 
also  of  importance  because  ice  is  a  necessity  in  the  summer 
for  the  preservation  of  foods,  especially  milk,  and  the  ina- 
bility of  the  city's  population  particularly  in  the  crowded 
districts  to  obtain  ice  at  reasonable  rates  shows  itself  in- 
evitably in  the  increase  in  a  great  variety  of  diseases. 

The  next  portion  of  the  city's  food  supply  which  is  com- 
monly exposed  to  insanitary  treatment  and  therefore  be- 
comes a  frequent  source  of  disease  among  consumers  is 
the  meat  supply.  The  protection  of  the  public  health  against 
danger  from  impure  meat  must  begin  before  the  animals 


18  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

are  slaughtered  and  in  the  case  of  slaughter  establishments 
in  or  near  the  city  this  can  be  accomplished  without  great 
difficulty.  Where  meat  is  dressed  at  a  great  distance  it 
becomes  impossible  to  inspect  the  animals  themselves  and 
is  therefore  of  even  greater  importance  to  provide  a  rigid 
inspection  of  the  carcases  before  sale  to  the  public.  There 
are  many  diseases  common  to  cattle  and  other  slaughter 
animals  which  make  their  meat  unfit  for  human  consump- 
tion, and  many  of  these  can  easily  be  detected  in  the  ani- 
mals before  slaughter  and  so  lead  to  their  rejection.  Others 
cannot  be  discovered  until  after  killing,  and  inspection  at 
both  times  is  therefore  important,  and  at  the  latter  time  in- 
dispensable. But  the  condition  of  the  animals  is  by  no  means 
the  only  point  of  importance  that  requires  careful  watching 
in  the  interests  of  public  health.  The  sanitary  conditions 
at  the  slaughter  houses,  the  health  of  the  employees,  the 
treatment  of  the  carcases  and  offal  are  all  matters  of  con- 
cern from  a  sanitary  point  of  view. 

As  in  the  case  of  milk,  so  in  the  case  of  meat,  it  is  a  com- 
mon practice  to  employ  harmful  chemicals  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  meat.  This  can  readily  be  detected  by  sanitary 
inspectors  and  the  improper  meat  be  destroyed.  Even  more 
dangerous,  however,  than  the  ordinary  "doctored"  meat  is 
decayed  meat  in  all  stages  of  decomposition.  The  sale  of 
such  meat  can  readily  be  prevented  if  the  ordinances  pro- 
vide a  sufficient  penalty  and  the  health  department  provides 
an  adequate  force  of  inspectors.  The  serious  consequences 
of  a  failure  to  enforce  such  ordinances  and  the  difficulty  of 
a  continuous  inspection  lead  one,  however,  almost  inevita- 
bly, to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  the  proper  function  of  the 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  19 

city  to  build  and  operate  its  own  slaughter  house  and  require 
all  meat  sold  in  the  city  to  be  slaughtered  under  the  sanitary 
conditions  provided  there.  This  is  a  municipal  operation 
in  countless  European  cities  and  is  coming  to  be  more  and 
more  so  in  this  country  also.  After  the  meat  leaves  the 
slaughter  house  and  goes  to  the  meat  market  it  must  still 
be  protected  against  contamination  and  decay.  In  the  trans- 
port itself  the  meat  should  be  kept  cool  and  protected  from 
flies  and  dust  and  the  same  is  true  of  its  manipulation  in 
the  market.  It  is  in  the  markets,  furthermore,  that  almost 
continuous  inspection  is  necessary  to  prevent  the  sale  of  de- 
cayed or  partially  decayed  meat,  especially  of  fish.  Here 
again  the  requirements  of  public  health  as  well  as  economic 
considerations  have  led  many  cities  of  Europe  to  establish 
municipal  markets,  a  movement  which  is  gaining  ground  in 
this  country  also  and  is  full  of  promise  for  improved  health 
conditions. 

Among  the  other  agencies  of  distribution  of  the  food 
supply  in  the  city  the  most  important  are  the  groceries, 
which,  therefore,  must  be  brought  under  the  supervision 
of  the  health  authorities.  The  cleanliness  of  the  store  itself 
and  its  surroundings,  as  well  as  of  its  employees  has  an 
immediate  effect  on  the  sanitary  character  of  the  wares 
that  are  sold  there.  Protection  against  flies  by  screening 
and  against  dust  by  closed  receptacles  are  elementary  meas- 
ures and  should  be  observed  in  the  delivery  of  the  groceries 
as  well.  Even  in  the  case  of  groceries  there  is  need  of  pro- 
tection against  articles  injurious  to  health  because  of  being 
in  a  state  of  partial  decomposition,  tho  the  danger  is  not  as 


20  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

great  and  is  more  easily  guarded  against  than  in  the  case 
of  meat. 

Bakeries  are  the  source  of  an  important  part  of  the 
city's  food  supply  which  is  very  frequently  prepared  under 
the  most  insanitary  and  dangerous  conditions.  The  ease 
with  which  the  ingredients  used  for  baking  take  up  dust 
and  dirt,  and  the  close  contact  of  the  materials  with  the  per- 
sons employed  in  bakeries  makes  the  sanitary  condition 
and  surroundings  of  the  bake  shops  and  the  cleanliness  of 
the  bakers  matters  of  special  importance.  Here  again  the 
screening  against  flies  and  the  protection  of  the  wares 
against  dust  and  unnecessary  handling  are  of  the  greatest 
importance.  Delivery  of  bread  and  other  wares  should 
be  required  in  securely  closed  paper  coverings. 

Ice  cream  parlors  and  soda  fountains  are  rightly  charged 
with  a  considerable  portion  of  the  sickness  caused  in  a  city 
by  the  consumption  of  unhygienic  milk  products.  Even 
when  the  milk  delivered  to  these  places  is  pure,  the  treat- 
ment it  receives  there  frequently  exposes  it  to  contamination. 
Lack  of  cleanliness  in  the  receptacles  used  for  storing  and 
handling  the  ice  cream  leads  to  contamination,  and  the  keep- 
ing of  ice  cream  for  too  long  a  period  is  also  a  menace  to  the 
public  health.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  practice  of  mak- 
ing over  ice  cream  after  it  has  once  stood  a  while  and  melted. 
All  these  practices  can  be  controlled  only  by  a  rigid  system 
of  inspection  to  carry  out  comprehensive  ordinances  en- 
forceable by  adequate  penalties. 

Finally,  there  remain  to  be  considered  in  connection  with 
the  city's  food  supply  hotels,  restaurants  and  other  public 
eating  places,  for  while  it  is  true  that  hotels  serve  in  large 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  21 

part  transients  in  the  city  rather  than  residents,  yet  in- 
sanitary handling  of  food  in  such  places  is  bound  to  affect 
the  health  of  the  permanent  community  as  well.  For  that 
reason  there  should  be  effective  inspection  of  kitchens  and 
store  rooms  with  a  view  to  sanitary  conditions,  in  such 
matters  as  screening  from  flies,  cleanliness  of  employees, 
and  state  of  preservation  of  the  food  served. 


22  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

QUESTION  SHEET  ON  THE  FOOD  SUPPLY. 

Water  Supply. 

What  is  the  city's  death  rate  from  typhoid  fever?  How 
many  cases  are  reported  each  year? 

Does  the  city  own  its  water  works? 

What  is  the  source  of  the  water  supply;  wells,  surface 
water? 

What  danger  of  pollution  of  the  sources  exists;  shallow 
wells,  habitations  or  factories  on  the  water  shed? 

How  is  the  water  protected  against  pollution  in  the  res- 
ervoirs and  pipes  ?  How  often  are  these  inspected  with 
this  in  view? 

How  often  are  bacteriological  and  chemical  tests  made 
of  the  water  to  determine  the  presence  of  injurious 
substances  or  bacteria? 

Are  private  wells  and  cisterns  permitted  as  sources  of 
drinking  water?  In  what  condition  are  such  wells  and 
cisterns  ?  How  often  are  they  inspected  ? 

What  is  the  capacity  in  gallons  of  the  water  works?  How 
many  gallons  per  capita  can  they  supply  a  day? 

How  many  families  and  houses  are  without  service  from 
the  water  works? 

What  is  the  minimum  charge  for  water?  Are  there  any 
families  unable  to  pay  this  charge? 

How  does  the  city  prevent  water  waste ;  by  meters,  by  in- 
spection for  leakage? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  23 

M ilk  Supply. 

What  is  the  infant  mortality  rate  in  the  city? 

What  is  the  condition  of  the  dairy  herds?  How  often  are 
they  inspected?  Is  the  tuberculin  test  given  regularly? 
Is  the  food  for  the  cows  wholesome  and  in  good  condi- 
tion? 

What  is  the  condition  of  the  barns?  Are  they  well  ven- 
tilated, dry,  well  screened,  and  generally  kept  clean? 
What  is  done  with  the  manure  and  sweepings  from  the 
barn?  How  often  inspected? 

Under  what  conditions  is  milking  done?  Are  cows'  ud- 
ders washed  before  milking?  Are  milkers'  hands 
thoroughly  cleaned?  Do  the  milkers  wear  clean 
clothes?  Are  they  inspected  regularly  for  contagious 
diseases,  particularly  as  carriers  thereof?  Are  they 
forbidden  to  expectorate  in  the  barns  and  is  that  en- 
forced ? 

How  is  milk  protected  against  dust,  dirt,  and  animals? 
Are  all  utensils  kept  clean  and  sterilized  by  steam  be- 
fore using?  Is  the  milk  properly  cooled?  How  soon 
after  milking,  to  what  temperature  and  by  what  means 
is  it  cooled? 

Is  the  milk  bottled  for  delivery?  How,  by  hand  or  ma- 
chine? 

Is  milk  kept  cool  until  delivery?  How  long  is  milk  kept 
between  milking  and  delivery? 


24  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

How  often  are  samples  taken  from  wagons  for  tests? 
What  tests  are  made;  for  water,  dirt,  quality  of  milk, 
preservatives,  bacteria  ? 

Does  the  city  have  a  milk  ordinance?  What  are  its  pro- 
visions, what  its  omissions  ?  Is  the  ordinance  enforced  ? 
Does  city  provide  pure  milk  for  babies  at  small  cost 
to  the  poor? 

Are  dairies  and  milk  dealers  licensed  by  the  city? 

Ice  Supply. 

Is  the  ice  sold  artificial  or  natural?  If  natural  is  the 
body  of  water  from  which  it  is  taken  pure?  Is  ice  in- 
spected regularly?  How  is  it  stored  and  how  handled? 

What  is  the  price  charged?  Does  the  city  provide  cheap 
ice  in  the  summer  to  the  poor? 

Meat  Supply. 

What  are  conditions  under  which  meat  is  slaughtered 
-  in  or  near  the  city?  Are  the  slaughter  houses  well 
lighted,  properly  ventilated,  clean  and  dry?  Is  meat 
inspected  before  and  after  slaughtering  by  competent 
inspectors  ?  Are  all  employees  clean  in  body,  habits  and 
dress?  Is  meat  kept  in  cold  storage,  and  screened 
from  flies?  What  is  done  with  the  offal? 

How  is  meat  protected  in  transportation  to  the  markets? 
Is  it  tightly  covered  and  protected  from  dust  and  flies 
and  kept  cold? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  25 

Are  markets  sanitary,  i.  e.,  clean,  well  screened  and  pro- 
tected from  dust  and  do  they  have  cold  storage  facili- 
ties? 

Is  the  meat  kept  for  sale  in  the  markets  regularly  in- 
spected as  to  state  of  preservation,  as  to  presence  of 
preservatives?  How  often? 

How  is  meat  delivered,  well  wrapped? 

Does  the  city  provide  by  ordinance  for  the  regulation  and 
inspection  of  slaughter  houses  and  meat  shops?  Is  the 
ordinance  enforced? 

Groceries. 

Are  the  groceries  and  surroundings  kept  clean?  Are  the 
stores  screened  and  the  articles  of  food  kept  in  covered 
receptacles  or  otherwise  protected  from  dust? 

Are  the  goods  regularly  inspected  to  guard  against  the 
sale  of  unfit  food? 

What  regulation  does  the  city  impose  on  the  grocery 
business? 

What  regulations  and  inspection  for  fruit  and  vege- 
table vendors  who  sell  from  the  wagon? 

Ice  Cream  Parlors  and  Soda  Fountains. 

Is  the  ice  cream  made  in  sanitary  surroundings  ?  Is  fresh 
milk  used?  Is  ice  cream  ever  made  over?  How  long 
is  ice  cream  kept  before  sale  or  destruction? 


26  PUBLIC  HEALTH — FOOD  SUPPLY 

Are  all  receptacles  thoroughly  washed  and  sterilized  be- 
fore using? 

Are  the  flavorings  used  without  harmful  ingredients  ? 

What  regulation  does  the  city  impose  on  soda  fountains 
and  ice  cream  parlors,  and  on  vendors  of  ice  cream 
and  ices  from  wagons? 

Hotels  and  Restaurants. 

Are  all  public  eating  places  subjected  to  license? 

Are  the  kitchens  in  which  food  is  prepared  kept  clean? 
Are  they  screened  against  flies  ?  Are  the  employees  re- 
quired to  keep  clean  in  body  and  habits?  Are  they 
inspected  for  contagious  diseases  ? 

Are  all  utensils  and  dishes  thoroughly  cleaned  after 
using? 

Are  examinations  made  of  the  food  served  to  guard 
against  the  use  of  decomposed  or  spoiled  food  ? 

What  regulation  and  inspection  of  eating  places  does  the 
city  provide  by  ordinance  and  how  well  are  the  regula- 
tions enforced? 

Bakeries. 

Are  bake  shops  kept  clean,  free  from  flies  and  dust  ?  Are 
employees  clean  in  person  and  habits  ?  Are  loaves  pro- 
tected against  handling? 


III. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH  (Continued.) 

Abatement  of  Nuisances.  Collection  and  Disposal  of  Garb- 
age, Sewage  and  Other  Wastes.    School  Hygiene. 

Abatement  of  Nuisances. 

The  abatement  of  nuisances  has  been  the  traditional  police 
activity  of  our  cities  in  the  domain  of  public  health  and  is 
still  an  important  part  of  the  health  activities  of  American 
cities  to-day.  But,  as  we  have  seen  before,  greater  empha- 
sis is  being  placed  to-day  on  preventive  rather  than  cura- 
tive measures  and  the  proper  function  of  the  city  is  there- 
fore to  prevent  nuisances.  If  that  is  done  effectively  there 
will  be  little  or  nothing  in  the  way  of  nuisances  to  abate. 

Cities  are  generally  given  a  rather  broad  power  of  defin- 
ing and  prohibiting  nuisances,  and  although  it  is  a  matter 
of  some  difficulty  to  determine  just  what  the  legal  limits  of 
this  power  may  be,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  any  act  or  omis- 
sion which  has  a  detrimental  effect  on  the  health  of  the 
community  may  be  forbidden  as  a  nuisance.  We  may  there- 
fore regard  as  nuisances  all  practices  and  conditions  which 
may  injuriously  affect  the  public  health  and  which  are  not 
specially  considered  under  any  of  the  other  topics  presented 
in  the  discussion  of  the  public  health  of  the  city.  Nor  is  it 
necessary  for  our  purposes  that  we  restrict  ourselves  to 

27 


28  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

acts  or  omissions  of  individuals,  for  the  city  itself  may  cre- 
ate nuisances  through  carelessness  or  ignorance. 

If  we  consider  first  the  duties  of  the  city  with  regard  to 
its  own  acts  which  may  be  injurious  to  public  health,  we 
find  that  the  chief  concern  is  the  treatment  of  its  property. 
So  all  public  buildings  should  be  kept  in  a  sanitary  condition 
and  the  care  of  the  streets  properly  looked  after.  The  proper 
paving  of  streets  is  not  merely  a  matter  that  affects  the 
beauty  of  the  city  and  the  convenience  of  traffic  and  trans- 
portation, it  has  also  an  important  bearing  on  public  health. 
Streets  that  are  not  properly  paved  cannot  be  kept  clean, 
and  streets  that  are  not  kept  clean  constitute  a  menace  to 
public  health  because  dirt  and  dust  are  breeding  places  for 
flies  and  carriers  of  disease  germs.  For  that  reason  all 
streets  should  be  well  paved  and  thoroughly  cleaned  by  the 
city  if  it  is  not  to  be  guilty  of  itself  permitting  the  existence 
of  a  nuisance.  In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to  mention 
that  the  city  must  guard  its  property,  both  buildings  and 
streets,  from  being  made  the  depositories  of  disease  germs 
by  expectoration.  Finally  public  comfort  stations  are  both 
a  convenience  to  the  public  and  an  aid  in  keeping  the  city 
clean  and  sanitary. 

After  the  buildings  and  property  of  the  city  itself,  the 
next  most  important  premises  to  be  kept  in  a  sanitary  con- 
dition are  those  of  persons  or  corporations  that  serve  the 
general  public.  Among  these  would  be  included  public 
carriers,  theaters,  churches,  and  stores.  The  most  import- 
ant public  earners  are  ordinarily  the  street  railways.  They 
should  be  required  to  keep  the  cars  in  clean  condition  and 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  29 

should  be  protected  by  ordinances  forbidding  expectoration. 
Overcrowding  of  cars  is  not  merely  an  inconvenience  but 
a  menace  to  public  health  and  the  companies  should  there- 
fore be  forbidden  to  permit  it.  The  proper  ventilation  of 
cars  and  adequate  heating  in  winter  should  be  insisted  upon 
also  in  the  interests  of  public  health.  Other  owners  of  car- 
riers such  as  hacks,  cabs,  and  jitneys  should  be  required  to 
keep  the  vehicles  in  sanitary  condition  by  regular  and  thor- 
ough cleaning.  Theaters  are  in  need  of  regulation  both  in 
the  interests  of  public  safety  as  regards  strength  of  con- 
struction and  safeguards  against  fire,  and  in  the  interests 
of  public  morals  as  regards  the  character  of  exhibitions. 
But  it  is  also  important  that  they  be  regulated  in  the  inter- 
ests of  public  health,  for  ill  ventilated,  overcrowded  theaters 
are  sure  places  for  spreading  contagious  diseases.  Condi- 
tions are  likely  to  be  especially  bad  in  the  moving  picture 
shows  which  are  usually  merely  converted  stores  without 
either  adequate  light  or  air.  Churches  should  also  be  con- 
trolled in  the  matter  of  ventilation,  though  they  are  not  as 
frequently  offenders  against  the  requirements  of  public 
hygiene  in  this  regard  as  are  theaters.  Stores  are  places  of 
public  resort  and  as  such  should  be  required  to  provide 
proper  ventilation  and  sanitary  conveniences  not  only  for 
the  employees  but  for  the  public  as  well. 

In  addition  to  these  public  and  quasi  public  properties 
which  may,  if  not  properly  regulated,  constitute  dangers 
to  the  public  health  there  are  many  private  properties  and 
undertakings  which  are  likely  to  become  nuisances  unless 
carefully  watched.  Factories  may  easily  constitute  a  health 


30  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

menace  through  their  smoke,  noise,  and  waste  products. 
To  guard  against  these  dangers,  factories  should  in  the 
first  place  be  restricted  to  definite  districts,  should  be  re- 
quired to  install  smoke  consuming  devices  if  they  use  smoky 
fuel,  and  should  be  forbidden  to  make  unnecessary  noises 
in  their  business.  Certain  kinds  of  manufacturing  process- 
es, those  which  emit  dangerous  gases  and  vile  odors,  should 
not  be  permitted  within  the  limits  of  the  city  at  all.  Another 
common  source  of  unnecessary  smoke  and  noise  in  the  city 
are  the  railroads.  These  should  be  compelled  to  minimize 
both  kinds  of  nuisances  to  the  greatest  possible  extent. 

Every  property  owner  in  the  city  whether  it  be  used  for 
residence  or  business  purposes  should  be  compelled  to  keep 
that  property  in  such  a  condition  that  it  cannot  be  the 
source  of  danger  to  the  public  health  through  the  existence  of 
nuisances  thereon.  So  dirt  and  trash  should  not  be  allowed 
to  accumulate.  The  keeping  of  animals  should  be  subjected 
to  strict  regulations  of  a  sanitary  kind.  Certain  kinds  of 
animals  should  not  be  permitted  at  all,  such  as  pigs  for 
instance,  and  others  should  be  kept  only  in  definite  kinds 
of  enclosures.  The  keeping  of  horses  and  cows  must  be 
carefully  controlled  in  the  interests  of  sanitary  disposition 
of  stable  wastes,  and  the  keeping  of  dogs  and  chickens 
should  be  regulated  with  particular  reference  to  unnecessary 
noises,  which  are  a  common  source  of  danger  to  health  in 
the  city.  Rats,  mice  and  vermin  generally  are  carriers  of 
disease  and  it  should  be  made  the  duty  of  every  house  own- 
er to  take  steps  for  their  extermination.  Mosquitoes  are 
also  carriers  of  disease  and  can  be  eliminated  by  the  com- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  31 

bined  effort  of  citizens  and  the  public  authorities.  As  mos- 
quitoes can  breed  only  in  stagnant  or  quiet  water  the  first 
care  should  be  the  destruction  of  breeding  places  by  properly 
draining  streets  and  lots.  Where  water  pools  cannot  be 
drained  they  should  be  oiled  during  the  mosquito  breeding 
season.  Cisterns  should  be  covered  and  all  receptacles  in 
which  water  can  collect,  including  rain  pipes,  should  be 
kept  dry.  Finally  vacant  lots  should  be  kept  free  from 
weeds  which  may  become  sources  of  danger  to  the  public 
health.  It  is  apparent,  therefore,  that  for  the  effective  care 
of  the  public  health  in  the  city  it  is  necessary  that  every 
citizen  become  the  guardian  of  the  public  health  by  avoid- 
ing acts  on  his  part  and  conditions  on  his  property  which 
may  threaten  the  public  health.  But  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
city  to  insist  on  such  action  by  the  citizens  and  to  provide 
penalties  for  and  enforce  them  against  those  persons  who 
are  neglectful  of  their  obligations  in  this  regard. 

Collection  and  Disposal  of  Sewage,  Garbage,  and  Waste. 
No  city  can  be  said  to  be  properly  caring  for  the  health  of 
its  inhabitants  if  it  does  not  provide  a  proper  sewerage 
system.  The  days  of  nasty  and  dangerous  dry  closets  and 
cess  pools  should  be  past  for  every  city,  no  matter  what  its 
size,  and  the  first  care  of  the  community  which  is  develop- 
ing from  a  village  to  a  town  or  city  should,  after  a  proper 
water  supply  has  been  secured,  be  the  building  of  a  sewer 
system  and  the  prohibition  on  any  other  form  of  sewage 
treatment.  A  good  index  therefore  of  the  state  of  develop- 
ment of  a  city  in  sanitary  matters  may  be  found  in  the 
number  of  dry  closets  and  cess  pools  to  be  found  therein. 


32  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

A  sewerage  system  to  be  a  good  one  should  serve  every 
house  and  building,  should  furnish  free  and  compulsory  ser- 
ice,  should  be  adequate  in  size  and  proper  in  construction. 
Among  the  more  important  engineering  aspects  of  the  sew- 
erage systems  are  the  sufficiency  of  the  grade  for  carrying 
off  the  sewage  freely,  and  the  proper  ventilation  of  the 
sewers  to  get  rid  of  the  sewer  gas  without  danger  and  an- 
noyance to  the  inhabitants.  The  city  should  see  that  all 
plumbing  in  the  houses  is  sanitary,  especially  in  the  matter 
of  preventing  gas  from  the  sewer  from  entering  the  houses. 
The  disposal  of  the  sewage  by  the  city  offers  another  im- 
portant health  problem.  The  mere  dumping  of  the  raw  sew- 
age into  the  nearest  water  stream  which  used  to  be  the 
commonest  method  of  getting  rid  of  the  city's  waste,  is  or 
should  be  no  longer  permissible,  in  the  interests  of  the 
health  of  other  communities.  Each  city  must  therefore 
make  proper  disposal  of  its  sewage  in  or  near  its  own  ter- 
ritory. The  most  satisfactory  manner  seems  to  be  the  use 
of  septic  tanks,  separating  out  the  sludge  or  solid  matter 
to  be  dried  and  used  in  one  of  several  ways,  and  the  puri- 
fication of  the  effluent  or  liquid  matter  by  means  of  chemi- 
cals before  turning  it  into  water  streams.  The  sewer  system 
should  not  receive  factory  wastes,  hospital  sewage  or  sew- 
age from  houses  where  there  are  patients  with  typhoid 
fever  or  other  communicable  diseases  of  that  nature,  nor 
surface  water.  Factory  wastes  present  special  difficulties 
because  of  the  chemicals  contained,  and  manufacturing 
plants  should  therefore  be  required  to  make  proper  dis- 
position of  their  own  wastes.  The  sewage  from  contagious 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  33 

wards  in  hospitals  and  from  patients  suffering  from  conta- 
gious diseases  presents  special  danger.  It  should  be  re- 
quired that  such  sewage  be  thoroughly  disinfected  before 
being  turned  into  the  sewer  system.  Surface  drainage 
from  the  streets  should  be  taken  care  of  by  special  storm 
sewers  distinct  from  the  sewerage  system  proper,  Other- 
wise in  time  of  heavy  rains  the  sewers  will  be  unable  to 
carry  off  the  surface  drainage  and  will  back  up  the  sewage 
into  the  houses,  causing  a  serious  menace  to  public  health. 

Garbage  collection  and  disposal  is  another  function  of  the 
city  which  has  an  important  bearing  on  the  public  health. 
Property  owners  should  be  required  to  place  the  garbage 
from  their  premises  in  tightly  closed  receptacles  convenient 
for  collection  by  the  city.  The  city  should  collect  this  garb- 
age at  least  twice  a  week  in  order  to  prevent  the  decompo- 
sition of  the  food  remains  from  becoming  obnoxious.  The 
collection  should  occur  by  means  of  covered  wagons  or  carts 
so  handled  as  to  prevent  the  falling  off  of  any  garbage  dur- 
ing transportation.  As  the  dumping  of  garbage  in  open 
lots  constitutes  a  serious  nuisance  to  all  surrounding  prop- 
erty the  garbage  must  be  reduced  to  an  innocuous  condition. 
This  can  easily  be  done  by  means  of  modern  reduction  plants 
which  permit  some  saleable  products  to  be  secured  in  the  re- 
duction process,  such  as  oils  and  fuel  bricks.  Closely  con- 
nected with  garbage  collection  is  the  matter  of  collection  of 
trash  and  other  wastes,  which  like  garbage  become  the 
breeding  place  for  flies  and  centers  of  germ  infection  if  al- 
lowed to  accumulate. 


34  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

School  Hygiene. 

School  hygiene  constitutes  one  of  the  most  important  of 
the  proper  health  activities  of  the  city  for  it  devotes  atten- 
tion to  the  sanitary  conditions  under  which  the  children  of 
the  community  spend  the  greatest  number  of  their  waking 
hours.  School  hygiene  therefore  looks  to  the  future  health 
of  the  city  as  well  as  the  present,  for  many  children  are  in- 
jured in  health  by  insanitary  conditions  in  the  schools  and 
their  vitality  is  weakened  and  with-  it  their  power  of  resist- 
ance to  disease.  The  first  point  of  importance  is  the  provis- 
ion of  sanitary  buildings.  Many  school  buildings  are  insuf- 
ficiently heated,  poorly  ventilated,  without  proper  light  and 
over  crowded.  Schools  should  furthermore  be  provided  with 
proper  play  grounds,  and  with  sanitary  washing  and  toilet 
facilities.  An  important  phase  of  school  hygiene  is  the 
medical  inspection  of  children.  This  is  not  merely  to  guard 
against  the  spread  of  contagious  diseases  which  are  almost 
always  present  in  a  body  of  school  children,  but  chiefly  to 
prevent  the  children  from  being  injured  by  their  school 
work.  A  large  number  of  the  children  in  our  schools  suffer 
from  weak  eyes  without  knowing  it,  and  often  cause  irre- 
parable damage  to  their  eyesight  by  subjecting  their  eyes 
to  undue  strain.  A  medical  examination  of  the  children  at 
regular  intervals  would  prevent  this  as  well  as  other  ills 
of  which  the  parents  may  know  nothing.  Defective  hear- 
ing, extreme  nervousness,  adenoids,  poor  teeth,  are  all  han- 
dicaps under  which  many  children  suffer  without  their  par- 
ents knowing  of  it.  The  school  inspection  presents  a  con- 
venient and  valuable  way  of  subjecting  children  to  proper 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  35 

examination  and  prescribing  for  their  cure  at  the  most  fa- 
vorable time.  Instruction  in  personal  hygiene  should  play 
an  important  part  in  the  school  curriculum  from  the  earli- 
est days,  for  the  value  of  cleanliness  is  a  lesson  which  can- 
not be  too  often  instilled  and  which  is  too  often  neglected 
even  in  what  are  ordinarily  called  the  better  homes.  It  is 
generally  felt,  for  instance,  that  sex  hygiene,  though  emi- 
nently a  subject  to  be  taught  the  children  by  their  parents, 
is  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  not  dealt  with  properly 
or  at  all  and  must  therefore  be  handled  in  the  school  because 
of  its  fundamental  relation  to  the  future  health  of  the  child- 
ren. 


36  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

QUESTION  SHEET  ON  CHAPTER  III. 

General  Sanitary  Conditions. 

Are  the  public  buildings  of  the  city  kept  in  a  sanitary 
condition?  Is  the  rule  against  expectoration  enforced? 
How  often  are  rooms  and  corridors  swept  and  scrub- 
bed? 

What  proportion  of  streets  are  paved?  How  often  are 
the  paved  streets  cleaned.  Are  they  swept,  flushed? 
Are  paved  streets  kept  in  good  repair  or  are  they  full 
of  holes  where  filth  may  accumulate  ?  Are  the  unpaved 
streets  sprinkled?  Are  they  regularly  leveled  to  pre- 
vent holes  and  ruts  from  forming? 

Are  side-walks  kept  clean  ?  Is  the  rule  against  expectora- 
tion enforced?  Are  persons  forbidden  to  throw  trash 
on  side  walks?  Are  walks  washed  by  city  or  property 
owners  ? 

Does  the  city  provide  public  comfort  stations? 

Are  street  cars  kept  clean,  well  ventilated,  and  heated  in 
winter?  Is  the  rule  against  expectoration  enforced? 
Are  other  public  conveyances  required  to  be  regularly 
and  thoroughly  cleansed  ?  Are  cars  overcrowded  ? 

What  regulations  exist  with  regard  to  ventilation  of 
theaters  and  other  public  halls?  Are  they  enforced? 

Are  factories  required  to  provide  smoke  consumers?  Do 
any  factories  in  the  city  produce  disagreeable  or  dan- 
gerous fumes  or  odors?  Do  they  make  noise  audible 
to  any  distance  from  the  grounds?  Do  factory  whistles 
make  unnecessary  noise? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  37 

Do  railway  trains  in  the  city  emit  considerable  amounts 
of  smoke?  Do  their  bells  and  whistles  seem  to  make 
undue  noise? 

What  other  noises  disturb  the  quiet  of  the  city  unneces- 
sarily; church  bells,  hucksters,  newsboys,  musicians, 
dogs,  chickens  or  other  animals? 

Are  other  animals  besides  horses  and  cows  kept  in  stables 
or  barns  in  the  city?  How  often  is  the  manure  re- 
moved? Is  it  screened  against  flies?  Does  the  keep- 
ing of  any  such  animals  cause  disagreeable  odors  in 
the  vicinity? 

Are  house  owners  required  to  keep  their  premises  free 
from  rats,  mice  and  filth  eating  vermin? 

Are  mosquitoes  abundant?  What  steps  are  taken  for 
their  extermination?  Does  the  city  permit  marshy 
undrained  land  in  or  near  its  territory?  Are  wells  and 
cisterns  required  to  be  screened  or  oiled? 

Are  vacant  lots  kept  free  from  rank  weeds,  trash  and 
filth? 

What  provision  do  city  ordinances  make  for  the  pre- 
vention of  the  above  named  nuisances  and  how  effec- 
tively are  they  enforced? 

Collection  and  Disposal  of  Sewage,  Garbage  and  Waste. 

Does  the  city  own  its  sewerage  system?  What  rates  are 
charged  ?  Is  connection  compulsory  ?  How  many  hous- 
es are  not  served  by  the  sewer  system?  Do  they  have 
dry  closets  or  cess  pools?  What  regulations  does  the 
city  impose  with  regard  to  such  closets  and  pools? 


38  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

Does   the   city  have   a   plumbing   inspector?     Must   all 

plumbing  be  inspected  by  him  before  it  is  approved? 
Do  the  sewers  back  up  and  overflow  during  heavy  rains? 

Is  there  any  complaint  of  sewer  gas?     Are   sewers 

flushed  at  regular  intervals? 
How  does  city  dispose  of  its  sewage? 
What  is  done  with  wastes  from  contagious  wards  and 

infected  persons  elsewhere? 
How  often  is  garbage  collected  in  the  city?    Is  it  placed 

in  tightly  covered  receptacles  by  residents  ?    Is  it  taken 

away  in  covered  wagons? 
What  is  done  with  garbage?    Does  it  become  obnoxious 

through  being  dumped  on  lots  or  burned  in  the  open? 
What  provision  does  the  city  make  for  the  collection  and 

disposal  of  trash? 

School  Hygiene. 

What  is  the  condition  of  the  school  buildings  as  to  light 

and  air,  heat  in  winter,  playground  facilities,  toilet  and 

wash  roms? 

Are  school  rooms  overcrowded? 
Are  children  examined  for  contagious  diseases  ?    Are  they 

examined  as  to  eye  sight,  hearing,  adenoids  and  other 

defects? 
Is  a  school  nurse  provided  for  the  treatment  of  injuries 

and  accidents  occurring  on  the  school  grounds? 
How  much  time  is  devoted  to  the  teaching  of  personal 

hygiene? 
What  attempt  is  made  to  give  instruction  in  sex  hygiene? 


IV. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH  (Continued.) 

Treatment  of  Contagious  Diseases.  Care  of  the  Sick.  Or- 
ganization and  Powers  of  the  Health  Department. 

Treatment  of  Contagious  Diseases. 

The  protection  of  the  community  against  the  spread  of 
contagious  diseases  was  the  first  development  in  public 
health  work  of  cities,  for  the  cities  of  the  middle  ages  and 
the  centuries  following  suffered  incredibly  from  the  rav- 
ages of  the  plague,  cholera  and  other  diseases  of  a  like  na- 
ture. To-day  also  the  first  care  of  the  community  after 
looking  to  the  sanitary  conditions  within  its  territory  is  to 
prevent  the  introduction  of  contagious  diseases  from  with- 
out. This  is  done  by  the  establishment  of  a  proper  quaran- 
tine. As  regards  the  protection  in  sea  port  cities  against 
diseases  brought  by  ship  from  other  ports  the  matter  of 
quarantine  presents  no  great  difficulties.  But  in  the  case 
of  inland  cities  it  is  a  much  more  difficult  task  to  prevent 
the  introduction  of  dangerous  diseases  by  passengers  who 
come  by  rail  or  other  conveyances.  The  most  that  can  be 
done  in  such  cases  is  to  keep  careful  note  of  the  appearance 
of  epidemics  of  dangerous  diseases  in  nearby  cities  or  in 
places  located  on  the  main  lines  of  travel  and  to  institute 
inspection  and  quarantine  with  regard  to  persons  coming 

39 


40  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

from  centers  of  infection.  Adequate  protection  against 
such  dangers  can,  however,  be  secured  only  through  the  ef- 
ficient work  of  the  state  and  federal  health  authorities  co- 
operating to  prevent  the  carrying  of  communicable  diseases 
from  one  portion  of  the  state  to  another,  or  from  one  state 
into  another. 

If  it  is  true  that  the  establishment  of  adequate  protection 
against  the  introduction  of  contagious  diseases  from  with- 
out presents  problems  that  are  beyond  the  power  of  the 
city  to  solve  alone,  the  prevention  of  the  spread  of  such  dis- 
eases within  the  city  is  quite  within  the  possibilities  of  mu- 
nicipal achievement.  The  first  step  in  such  prevention 
must  be  the  establishment  and  enforcement  of  a  duty  of  no- 
tification. Every  case  of  a  communicable  disease  or  of 
death  from  such  a  disease,  or  of  a  suspected  case  should  be 
notified  to  the  health  authorities  of  the  city.  The  primary 
duty  of  notification  should  of  course  rest  on  the  physician 
in  attendance.  If  there  is  no  physician  in  attendance  then 
the  head  of  the  house  and  every  person  engaged  in  the 
treatment  and  care  of  the  patient  should  be  charged  with 
the  duty  of  notification.  The  list  of  diseases  concerning 
which  notification  should  be  required  should  be  published 
by  the  health  department  and  should  include  among  others 
typhoid  fever,  typhus,  cholera,  plague,  yellow  fever,  small 
pox,  dyptheria,  scarlet  fever,  measles,  mumps,  chicken  pox, 
whooping  cough,  tuberculosis,  etc. 

Upon  receiving  the  required  notification  the  health  de- 
partment should  at  once  investigate  the  case  and  if  it  finds 
a  case  of  contagious  disease  exists  or  that  there  is  reasona- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  41 

ble  suspicion  of  its  existence,  the  proper  protective  meas- 
ures should  be  instituted.  These  would,  of  course,  vary  with 
the  nature  of  the  disease  but  would  usually  comprise  the 
isolation  of  the  patient  either  in  a  contagious  ward  of  a  hos- 
pital or  in  a  room  if  treated  at  home  with  a  proper  placard 
on  the  house  to  prevent  the  admission  and  exposure  of  other 
persons.  In  certain  cases  the  protective  measures  would 
include  the  isolation  and  treatment  by  vaccination  or  other 
serum  of  all  persons  known  to  have  been  exposed  to  infec- 
tion by  the  patient.  It  is  not  possible  to  enter  into  the  de- 
tails of  procedure  demanded  by  each  of  the  various  dis- 
eases that  were  enumerated  and  others  that  might  be  men- 
tioned. Those  are  matters  of  a  technical  nature  which  the 
health  department  must  handle,  but  it  is  important  to  point 
out  here  that  the  health  authorities  must  be  given  large  pow- 
ers of  immediate  action  even  to  the  extent  of  abridging  the 
individual's  liberty  of  motion  and  of  destroying  clothing 
and  other  property  when  necessary  to  prevent  spread  of  a 
disease.  Obviously  also  it  is  the  duty  of  the  health  depart- 
ment to  make  careful  investigation  into  the  history  of  each 
case  in  order  to  determine  if  possible  the  original  source 
of  infection. 

Some  of  the  commonest  means  whereby  contagious  dis- 
eases are  spread  about  in  a  city  have  already  been  mentioned, 
such  as  contaminated  water,  milk,  and  other  articles  of 
food,  as  well  as  schools,  ill  ventilated  theaters  and  halls, 
expectoration  in  public  places,  etc.  Certain  others  should 
be  enumerated  here  because  they  would  not  come  under 
any  of  the  other  topics  under  the  head  of  public  health. 


42  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

Perhaps  most  important  among  these  others  should  be 
mentioned  barber  shops,  laundries,  and  public  drinking  and 
washing  places.  Barber  shops,  as  is  well  known,  are  fre- 
quently the. means  of  spreading  various  kinds  of  skin  dis- 
eases and  even  more  loathsome  diseases  if  proper  sanitary 
precautions  are  not  observed.  Such  precautions  should  in- 
clude the  sterilization  of  all  materials  brought  in  direct  con- 
tact with  the  skin,  particularly  razors,  brushes  and  towels 
and  the  shaving  mugs  used,  as  well  as  the  barbers'  hands, 
after  serving  each  customer.  The  barbers  themselves 
should  be  subjected  to  regular  examination  for  the  detec- 
tion of  diseases  capable  of  being  communicated  by  the  touch 
or  the  breath.  Laundries  are  frequently  centers  of  infec- 
tion for  contagious  diseases  as  clothes  from  diseased  persons 
or  employees  affected  with  communicable  diseases  can 
easily  be  transmitted  to  all  the  patrons  of  the  laundry 
through  contact  with  clothes  washed  under  improper  con- 
ditions. Disinfection  of  the  receptacles,  separate  treatment 
of  each  customer's  clothes,  and  the  medical  inspection  of 
the  employees  will  eliminate  much  of  the  danger  from  this 
source.  Finally  the  use  of  common  towels  in  public  wash 
places  and  the  use  of  common  drinking  cups  in  public  drink- 
ing places  is  responsible  for  the  spread  of  some  of  the 
most  dangerous  and  loathsome  of  communicable  diseases. 
No  such  towels  or  drinking  cups  should  be  permitted  within 
the  city,  for  it  is  a  simple  matter  to  provide  both  individual 
towels  and  individual  drinking  cups  wherever  either  of  the 
articles  are  used. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  43 

Care  of  the  Sick. 

Closely  connected  with  the  matter  of  handling  contagious 
diseases  is  the  problem  of  providing  medical  care  for  the 
poor  and  indigent.  In  one  respect  such  action  by  the  city 
could  better  be  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  social 
welfare  activities,  but  as  the  failure  to  provide  proper  medi- 
cal care  in  the  case  of  communicable  diseases  is  certain  to 
defeat  in  a  measure  the  safeguards  provided  against  the 
spread  of  such  diseases,  and  as  in  any  event  the  lack  of 
proper  medical  treatment  in  the  case  of  other  diseases  in- 
creases the  amount  of  sickness  in  the  community  and  raises 
the  death  rate,  it  is  not  illogical  to  treat  of  these  matters 
also  under  the  head  of  public  health.  There  should,  there- 
fore, be  a  city  hospital  with  a  contagious  ward  in  which  all 
cases  that  cannot  be  properly  treated  in  the  home  and  are 
unable  to  go  to  a  private  hospital  can  be  taken  care  of  at 
a  minimum  of  expense,  or  if  need  be  free.  One  or  more 
city  physicians  should  be  provided  for  the  treatment  of 
such  indigent  cases  whether  at  home  or  in  the  hospital 
and  visiting  nurses  should  be  provided  who  could  go  into 
the  homes  where  ignorance  and  dirt  interfere  with  proper 
living  and  the  treatment  of  minor  ills,  particularly  childrens' 
diseases,  and  eradicate  much  sickness  and  suffering  by  a 
little  welltimed  information  and  help.  Particularly  is  it 
true  in  the  case  of  childbirth  that  ignorance  of  the  funda- 
mentals of  proper  action  result  in  misery  and  loss  of  life 
to  mothers  and  babies  alike.  Much  of  the  blindness  in  the 
world  could  be  prevented  by  a  simple  precaution  taken  at 
child  birth  in  the  matter  of  washing  the  infants'  eyes  with 
a  proper  solution.  Midwives  should  not  be  permitted  to 


44  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

practice  their  profession  without  a  proper  certificate  of 
competence,  as  much  suffering  is  caused  through  their  lack 
of  scientific  training.  The  production  of  strong  healthy 
children  and  the  preservation  of  the  health  of  the  mothers 
is  obviously  a  most  fundamental  if  not  the  most  fundamen- 
tal concern  of  the  community  and  no  money  wisely  spent  in 
that  direction  can  be  considered  as  diverted  from  a  better 
use. 

Organization  and  Powers  of  the  City  Health  Department. 

The  brief  survey  in  this  and  the  preceeding  chapters  of 
the  proper  scope  of  the  health  activities  of  the  city,  though 
inadequate  to  show  the  full  content  and  importance  of  that 
function  has  been  extensive  enough  to  make  clear  that  a  well 
developed  and  directed  health  department  is  a  fundamental 
need  of  every  city.  The  size  and  to  some  extent  the  structure 
of  the  health  department  will  vary  with  the  size  and  some- 
what also  with  the  character  of  each  particular  city,  but  the 
fundamental  needs  are  the  same  everywhere.  These  fun- 
damentals may  be  briefly  stated  as  including  a  separate 
department  of  the  city  administration  under  the  direction 
of  an  expert  in  public  health  with  full  executive  powers. 
Associated  with  him  in  an  advisory  capacity  there  should 
be  a  board  consisting  of  physicians  and  laymen  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  general  policies  and  plans  of  the  health  de- 
partment, but  having  neither  legislative  nor  executive  au- 
thority. The  whole  subject  of  the  public  health  should  be 
regulated  by  a  comprehensive  code  imposing  duties  and  pro- 
viding penalties,  but  large  powers  of  discretion  to  act  in 
emergency  cases  must  be  left  to  the  health  officers.  Under 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  45 

the  health  officer  there  should  be  bureau  chiefs  in  charge  of 
the  various  branches  of  the  public  health  work,  the  number 
of  bureaus  depending  on  the  size  of  the  city.  Below  these 
bureau  chiefs  should  be  the  city  physician  or  physicians  and 
the  corps  of  inspectors  and  other  employees  all  appointed 
governed  and  removed  by  the  health  officer  under  proper 
civil  service  merit  rules  and  regulations.  The  number  of 
employees  should  of  course  depend  also  on  the  size  of  the 
city  in  population  and  area,  but  that  number  should  be  ade- 
quate to  permit  of  a  rigid  system  of  inspection  in  all  mat- 
ters enumerated  in  the  code. 

A  full  time  professional  health  officer  is  so  important  a 
need  for  every  city  that  only  the  very  smallest  cities  could 
afford  to  be  without  one,  and  every  incorporated  urban 
community  no  matter  how  small  has  important  health  prob- 
lems which  should  receive  the  attention  of  some  responsible 
person,  even  if  it  be  only  a  physician  who  devotes  a  portion 
of  his  time  to  the  work.  In  this  connection  it  is  important 
to  point  out  that  the  successful  solution  of  the  health  prob- 
lems of  the  city  can  be  hoped  for  in  complete  measure  only 
when  and  to  the  extent  that  each  citizen  considers  himself 
a  vital  part  of  the  health  department  both  in  bringing  to  the 
attention  of  the  health  authorities  violations  of  the  rules 
and  principles  of  public  hygiene  by  others  and  also  in  avoid- 
ing such  violations  himself  and  doing  all  he  can  irrespective 
of  laws  to  aid  in  the  preservation  of  the  public  health.  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  a  large  portion  of  the 
danger  to  public  health  arises  not  through  conscious  viola- 
tion of  the  law,  nor  even  through  inadvertance  or  careless- 
ness, but  rather  through  downright  ignorance  of  the 


46  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

underlying  principles  of  public  health.  It  becomes, 
therefore,  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  duties 
of  the  health  department  to  disseminate  as  widely  as  possi- 
ble among1  the  inhabitants  of  the  city  information  on  such 
matters.  This  can  be  effectively  done  through  bulletins 
and  pamphlet  literature,  through  public  health  exhibits,  and 
through  public  illustrated  lectures,  as  well  as  by  proper  in- 
struction in  the  schools  already  referred  to  in  another  place. 
This  work  is  of  course  in  its  nature  educative  in  a  general 
way  also,  but  because  of  its  intimate  connection  with  the 
preservation  and  improvement  of  sanitary  conditions  in 
the  city  it  belongs  to  the  scope  of  work  of  the  health  de- 
partment rather  than  to  that  of  the  education  department 
whose  activities  will  be  considered  in  a  later  chapter. 

Of  the  greatest  importance  for  the  proper  examination 
of  the  sanitary  conditions  of  every  city  are  the  vital  sta- 
tistics including  records  of  births,  marriages,  deaths,  with 
causes,  age  of  deceased,  etc.,  and  records  of  all  contagious 
diseases.  Without  such  statistics  the  health  department  is 
wholly  unable  to  know  where  unnecessary  loss  of  life  oc- 
curs or  avoidable  dangers  to  health  exist.  It  is  therefore 
the  duty  of  the  city  to  insist  that  all  such  records  shall  be 
accurately  kept,  either  by  the  police  or  health  departments. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  47 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  CHAPTER  IV. 

Treatment  of  Contagious  Diseases. 

What  provisions  are  made  for  notification  of  contagious 
diseases  or  of  suspicious  cases,  and  are  they  enforced? 

What  measures  are  adopted  for  protecting  other  persons 
from  danger  of  contracting  such  diseases ;  vaccination, 
other  anti-toxins?  Must  infected  houses  bear  official 
placards  of  the  existence  of  a  dangerous  disease  ?  How 
is  such  a  regulation  enforced? 

Have  health  authorities  adequate  power  to  compel  iso- 
lation? 

Have  health  authorities  power  to  compel  fumigation  of 
rooms  and  dwellings  and  to  destroy  infected  clothing 
when  necessary? 

Must  barber  shops  procure  a  license  based  on  evidence 
of  a  knowledge  of  the  sanitary  requirements  of  the 
trade? 

Is  compliance  with  such  sanitary  principles  insisted 
upon  by  means  of  regular  inspection? 

Are  laundries  subjected  to  any  sanitary  regulations? 
Are  these  enforced?  What  is  the  sanitary  condition 
in  laundries  with  regard  to  the  possibility  of  transmit- 
ting contagious  diseases  brought  in  by  other  clothes 
or  from  which  the  employees  suffer? 


48  PUBLIC  HEALTH 

Are  common  towels  permitted  in  public  wash  rooms  of 

hotels,  theaters,  saloons,  and  stores? 
Are  public  drinking  cups  permitted  in  these  same  or 

other  places? 

Care  of  the  Sick. 

Has  the  city  a  hospital  with  a  contagious  ward?  What 
care  is  furnished  there  and  at  what  prices? 

Is  there  a  city  physician  to  respond  to  calls  from  homes 
which  cannot  pay  a  private  physician?  How  many 
such  calls  does  each  physician  answer  per  day  or  week? 

Does  the  city  provide  visiting  nurses  to  look  after  expect- 
ant mothers  among  the  poorer  people  ? 

Is  the  practice  of  mid-wives  conditioned  upon  a  proper 
amount  of  training?  Is  there  a  lying-in  ward  in  the 
city  hospital? 

Organization  of  the  Health  Department. 

Is  there  a  full  time  professional  health  officer  in  charge 
of  a  separate  department  of  health  in  the  city? 

Does  he  have  broad  executive  powers  and  powers  of  sum- 
mary action  in  emergency  cases? 

Is  there  a  comprehensive  health  code  for  the  city?  When 
was  it  enacted  and  how  often  has  it  been  amended 
within  recent  years? 

What  educative  measures  does  the  health  department 
adopt  for  the  diffusion  of  sanitary  science? 

Are  vital  statistics,  that  is,  birth,  death  and  marriage  re- 
cords, records  of  all  contagious  and  infectious  diseases 
kept  by  the  city  ? 


V. 

PUBLIC  SAFETY. 

One  of  the  most  fundamental  obligations  of  every  gov- 
ernment, whether  state  or  local,  is  the  protection  of  its 
citizens  against  danger  to  their  persons  and  property,  either 
from  persons,  animals  or  inanimate  objects.  This  general 
function  is  commonly  called  the  police  function  of  govern- 
ment, and  the  power  of  the  government  to  perform  this 
function  is  known  as  the  police  power.  This  police  func- 
tion in  its  largest  sense  includes  a  good  many  activities 
which  are  not  in  this  country  ordinarily  entrusted  to  that 
branch  of  the  administrative  service  in  cities  known  as  the 
police  force,  for  in  its  wider  sense  it  includes  the  protection 
of  the  public  safety,  health  and  morals,  and  the  general  so- 
cial welfare.  As  the  activities  under  the  police  function 
which  deal  with  public  health,  morals,  and  social  welfare 
respectively  are  important  enough  to  warrant  individual 
consideration  in  other  chapters,  this  chapter  will  deal  only 
with  the  two  aspects  of  public  safety  included  in  the  terms 
police  protection  and  fire  protection. 

The  police  function,  in  its  narrower  sense,  that  is,  the 
function  of  the  police  force  of  the  city  in  preventing  and  de- 
tecting violations  of  the  law  and  bringing  the  offenders  to 
justice,  presents  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  city 
administration.  Inefficiency  and  corruption  are  probably 

49 


50  PUBLIC  SAFETY 

more  common  in  connection  with  the  police  department  of 
our  American  cities,  large  and  small  alike,  though  to  a 
more  noticeable  degree  in  the  large  cities,  than  in  any 
other  department.  Various  causes  might  be  assigned  for 
this  condition  of  affairs,  chief  among  them  perhaps  the 
general  disrespect  for  the  law  and  its  enforcement,  which 
is  characteristic  of  Americans  as  a  whole,  as  also  the  ten- 
dency of  a  portion  of  our  inhabitants  to  impose  their  own 
moral  standards  with  regard  to  Sunday  activities,  saloons, 
and  the  social  evil  on  the  community  as  a  whole,  and  to 
expect  the  police  department  to  enforce  such  enactments 
when  a  large  portion  of  the  community  is  not  in  sympathy, 
or  at  least  not  in  active  sympathy,  with  the  enactments  in 
question.  Whatever  the  influence  of  these  and  other  causes, 
may  be,  the  situation  undoubtedly  reflects  great  discredit  on 
our  American  city  police  as  a  whole.  But  there  are  certain 
considerations  to  be  kept  in  mind  with  regard  to  any  po- 
lice force  by  which  may  be  judged  the  efficiency  of  that 
force. 

In  the  first  place,  since  the  primary  duty  of  the  police 
force  is  to  prevent  violations  of  the  law  and  particularly 
the  more  serious  crimes  against  the  person  and  property, 
the  patrol  force  must  be  large  enough  to  cover  the  territory 
of  the  city  with  sufficient  thoroughness  to  make  the  com- 
mission of  serious  crimes  like  murder,  robbery,  burglary, 
arson  and  others  of  a  like  nature  extremely  difficult  with- 
out great  danger  of  detection.  For  that  purpose  the  city 
should  be  divided  up  into  districts  or  beats,  for  each  of 
which  there  should  be  provided  an  officer  to  do  continuous 
patrol  duty  covering  the  entire  beat  at  frequent  intervals, 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  51 

say  every  half  hour.  Of  course,  during  the  night  the  force 
should  be  larger  and  the  beats  smaller,  as  the  need  of  pro- 
tection is  greater.  In  order  to  insure  the  performance  of 
the  patrol  duty  by  the  policemen  they  should  be  required  to 
report  regularly  from  various  points  on  their  beat  to  head- 
quarters. This  primary  function  of  the  police  force  can 
best  be  checked  up  by  an  examination  of  the  number  of 
crimes  that  are  committed  in  the  city  and  the  number  in 
which  the  criminals  escape.  Any  considerable  number  of 
such  unapprehended  crimes  would  show  either  that  the 
force  was  inadequate  in  number  or  inefficient  in  the  per- 
formance of  their  duty,  or  both.  The  inadequacy  in  num- 
ber could  easily  be  discovered  by  an  examination  of  the 
amount  of  territory  to  be  covered  by  each  policeman,  ineffi- 
ciency in  the  performance  of  the  patrol  duty  could  be  easily 
determined  by  observing  whether  or  not  the  policemen  in 
the  various  beats  cover  the  territory  assigned  to  them  reg- 
ularly in  the  time  allowed.  The  presence  of  policmen  in 
saloons,  pool  rooms  and  other  amusement  places,  except  in 
the  performance  of  some  assigned  duty,  could  also  easily 
be  discovered  by  observation. 

The  importance  of  adequate  street  lighting  as  a  factor 
in  making  police  protection  adequate  at  night  would  seem  to 
be  too  obvious  for  mention  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  in 
many  places  the  prime  function  of  street  lighting  seems  to 
be  regarded  as  ornamental  rather  than  as  protective.  It  is 
for  this  reason  that  the  tendency  of  many  cities,  particularly 
the  smaller  ones,  to  have  a  few  of  the  main  business  streets 
brilliantly  lighted  in  imitation  of  the  "great  white  way," 
while  the  great  majority  of  the  streets  are  but  imperfectly 


52  PUBLIC  SAFETY 

lighted,  if  at  all,  is  greatly  to  be  deplored  from  the  point  of 
view  of  public  safety,  at  any  rate.  The  first  care  of  a  city 
in  the  matter  of  lighting  should  be  to  make  all  streets  rea- 
sonably light  at  night  from  the  point  of  view  of  detecting 
and  apprehending  wrongdoers,  as  well  as  to  guard  against 
danger  from  missteps  or  collisions  with  objects  or  persons 
in  the  dark.  When  that  is  accomplished  it  is  time  enough 
to  plan  for  brilliant  illumination  along  the  main  thorough- 
fares where  the  protective  feature  of  lighting  is  not  nearly 
as  important  as  it  is  in  the  less  frequented  portions  of 
the  city. 

Aside  from  the  prevention  of  crimes  and  the  apprehen- 
sion of  criminals  the  police  force  has  other  duties  to  per- 
form in  the  interests  of  public  safety.  Among  these  may 
be  mentioned  the  dispersion  of  mobs  and  suppression  of 
riots,  the  enforcement  of  traffic  regulations,  particularly  as 
to  the  speed  of  vehicles  and  the  ordering  of  traffic  at  street 
crossings,  preventing  injury  to  bystanders  at  fires,  first  aid 
to  the  injured,  and  emergency  measures  in  case  of  flood  or 
other  calamity.  In  all  these  cases  the  efficiency  of  the  po- 
lice in  the  performance  of  these  functions  can  best  be  meas- 
ured by  the  number  of  accidents  and  injuries  resulting  from 
inadequate  regulations  and  provisions  for  these  various 
contingencies. 

It  is  of  particular  importance  in  connection  with  the  po- 
lice department  that  the  selection  and  government  of  the 
personnel  of  the  force  be  put  on  a  merit  basis  and  taken 
out  of  politics.  For  not  only  is  the  character  of  the  duties 
to  be  performed  by  the  police  force  such  as  to  demand  men 
of  high  character  and  sterling  merit  due  not  merely  to  the 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  53 

dangerous  nature  of  their  work,  but  also  to  the  inevitable 
temptations  in  the  way  of  bribes  offered  to  acquire  im- 
munity from  interference  with  illegal  activities  or  to  avoid 
arrest  or  prosecution.  But  proper  selection  is  of  great  im- 
portance also  because  the  parties  that  profit  by  immunity 
from  punishment  for  violating  the  laws  can  bring  enormous 
political  pressure  to  bear  on  the  department  heads  in  their 
interest,  and  these  in  turn  can  instruct  their  subordinates 
on  pain  of  dismissal  to  follow  instructions  with  regard  to 
the  immunity  of  such  parties.  An  honest  policeman  under 
such  circumstances  is  in  the  dilemma  of  either  acting  ille- 
gally himself  under  instructions  from  above  or  of  being 
ousted  from  the  service.  Security  of  tenure  and  protec- 
tion against  removal  except  for  neglect  of  duty  become, 
therefore,  absolute  essentials  to  an  efficient  police  force. 

Fire  protection  in  the  city  presents  two  pretty  distinct 
phases.  One  is  the  matter  of  fire  prevention,  the  other  the 
problem  of  fighting  fires  when  they  do  occur.  In  both  of 
these  aspects  the  function  of  fire  protection  is  one  branch 
of  the  police  activity  of  the  city  in  protecting  its  citizens 
against  loss  of  life  and  property,  though  the  primary  source 
of  danger  in  this  latter  case  is  not  conscious  human  action 
as  in  the  other  case,  but  rather  of  elements  which  may  or 
may  not  be  let  loose  by  human  acts.  In  discussing  the  pre- 
vention of  crime,  it  was  seen,  the  only  measures  that  were 
considered  among  the  functions  of  the  police  department 
were  the  actual  interference  with  criminal  acts  about  to  be 
performed,  with,  of  course,  also  the  consequent  deterrent 
effect  of  almost  certain  apprehension  in  case  of  attempted 
or  accomplished  crime.  The  prevention  of  crime  in  an 


54  PUBLIC  SAFETY 

ulterior  sense,  that  is  the  remedying  of  conditions  that  lead 
to  the  production  of  criminals  and  the  commission  of  crimes 
are  matters  for  sociological  and  economic  legislation,  not 
for  the  police  department  of  the  city.  In  the  case  of  fire 
prevention,  however,  the  remedying  of  conditions  that  are 
dangerous  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  origin  and  spread 
of  fire  and  the  injury  to  persons  and  destruction  of  life 
when  fire  does  occur  are  much  simpler  problems  and  can 
very  well  be  entrusted  to  the  department  of  public  safety, 
either  in  the  regular  police  division  or  in  the  fire  division. 

Every  city  should  therefore  have  a  fire  code  for  the  pur- 
pose of  prohibiting  conditions  that  are  dangerous  from  this 
point  of  view.  For  many  purposes  this  would  be  in  the 
building  code,  covering  such  matters  as  the  determination 
of  fire  limits  within  which  the  buildings  must  not  be  of 
wood  and  must  have  certain  kinds  of  roofing,  the  fireproof 
construction  of  all  theaters,  factories  and  other  public  or 
quasi-public  buildings,  provisions  for  fire  escapes  on  all  such 
buildings,  as  well  as  requirements  that  doors  open  outward, 
aisles  be  not  obstructed,  etc.  The  inspection  and  approval 
of  electric  wiring  in  all  buildings  should  be  among  the  re- 
quirements of  such  a  code  and  the  provision  of  fire  extin- 
guishers in  all  buildings  intended  to  be  used  for  assemblies 
of  considerable  numbers  of  people.  Prohibitions  on  the  man- 
ufacture of  dangerous  explosives  within  city  limits,  special 
regulations  concerning  the  storing  of  explosives,  particu- 
larly of  gasolene  and  of  fireworks,  and  the  exclusion  of 
garage  and  other  wastes  comprising  explosive  materials 
from  the  city's  sewers  should  all  be  demanded  by  the  fire 
code.  Finally  may  be  mentioned  regulations  concerning  the 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  55 

accumulation  of  inflammable  wastes  in  or  near  stores  or 
other  buildings,  such  as  paper,  excelsior,  and  boxes.  The 
enforcement  of  all  these  regulations  may  be  entrusted  to 
the  regular  police  branch  of  the  public  safety  forces,  or 
better  still,  to  special  fire  inspectors  under  the  supervision 
of  the  fire  protection  branch. 

The  work  of  fire  prevention  is  an  important  part  of  the 
work  of  fire  protection,  for  it  has  frequently  been  shown 
that  the  great  majority  of  fires  that  occur  in  this  country 
are  easily  preventable  and  would  not  have  occurred  if  such 
regulations  as  those  enumerated  above  had  been  enacted 
and  enforced.  The  economic  waste  from  preventable  fires 
runs  into  millions  of  dollars  each  year,  not  even  counting 
the  high  insurance  rates  which  are  the  result  of  the  big 
fire  risk  caused  by  the  neglect  of  our  cities  to  enact  and  en- 
force proper  fire  codes.  But  even  when  fire  regulations 
have  been  properly  passed  and  enforced  there  will  still  be  a 
need  of  fire  fighting  forces  to  deal  with  unpreventable  fires. 
To  do  this  effectively  a  city  fire  department  needs  a  sufficient 
number  of  men  and  adequate  apparatus  to  answer  all  calls 
rapidly  and  to  work  to  the  best  advantage  when  on  the 
ground.  Small  cities  frequently  make  the  mistake  of  trying 
to  save  money  by  relying  on  volunteer  fire  departments  in- 
stead of  having  full  time  paid  forces.  Every  city  that  feels  it 
cannot  afford  to  pay  for  a  professional  force  would  do  well  to 
make  an  examination  of  the  annual  fire  loss  due  to  the  inevi- 
table delay  and  general  inefficiency  of  a  volunteer  depart- 
ment and  add  to  that  the  higher  insurance  rates  paid  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  inefficient  service.  Then  on  comparing  the  totals 
so  obtained  with  the  annual  cost  of  a  good  professional  de~ 


56  PUBLIC  SAFETY 

partment  many  cities  that  now  are  content  with  the  old 
method  in  the  thought  that  it  is  cheaper  will  be  inclined  to 
change  to  the  modern  and  only  apparently  more  expensive 
method. 

The  number  of  stations  and  the  number  of  men  required 
in  each  station  will  of  course  vary  with  the  size  of  the 
city  and  the  effectiveness  of  its  preventive  measures,  but 
the  number  and  character  of  the  fires  in  an  average  year 
will  give  a  good  indication  of  the  number  of  men  and  sta- 
tions needed  for  adequate  fire  fighting.  A  volunteer  force 
supplementary  to  the  regular  force  for  use  in  case  of  emer- 
gencies or  where  a  fire  had  spread  beyond  the  possibility 
of  control  would  of  course  be  a  good  precautionary  meas- 
ure, though  the  regular  police  force  should  be  available  for 
such  service  and  indeed  every  citizen  in  the  community 
be  liable  to  service  when  an  emergency  arises  as  he  is  in 
the  case  of  the  hue  and  cry  being  raised  or  in  the  ordinary 
apprehension  of  criminals.  But  for  all  ordinary  service  the 
regular  paid  department  should  be  adequate. 

In  the  matter  of  fire  fighting  equipment  technical  im- 
provements are  continually  being  made  of  which  cities 
should  take  advantage.  Just  as  the  steam  fire  engine  drawn 
by  horses  supplanted  the  hand  chemical  engines,  drawn  by 
men  which  had  themselves  superseded  the  bucket  brigades, 
so  today  the  motor  power  engine  is  everywhere  superseding 
the  horse  drawn  vehicles.  These  motor  engines  are  superior 
in  every  way  to  the  old  system  of  horse  drawn  vehicles  for 
they  are  more  rapidly  got  into  motion  when  an  alarm  is 
received,  make  better  time  on  the  way  to  the  fire  and  yet 
are  less  dangerous  to  traffic,  and  present  a  simpler  problem 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  57 

of  upkeep.  Of  course  a  fundamental  need  of  an  efficient  fire 
department  is  a  plentiful  supply  of  water  under  sufficient 
pressure  to  reach  the  highest  buildings  in  the  city  and  for 
ready  availability  the  city  should  have  fire  hydrants  at 
frequent  intervals.  These  water  facilities  are  also  desira- 
ble and  available  for  street  flushing  purposes,  which  we  have 
already  seen  to  be  a  part  of  the  city's  proper  function  in  the 
preservation  of  the  public  health.  Finally,  a  system  of 
electric  fire  alarm  boxes  is  a  necessary  part  of  an  efficient 
fire  fighting  equipment  as  soon  as  a  city  is  of  sufficient  size 
to  result  in  serious  loss  of  time  in  the  process  of  conveying 
the  information  of  the  location  of  a  fire  to  the  department. 


58  PUBLIC  SAFETY 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  PUBLIC  SAFETY. 

Police  Protection. 

How  many  policemen  are  there  on  the  city's  force?  How 
many  are  on  duty  during  the  day,  how  many  at  night? 

How  many  miles  of  streets  are  there  in  the  city? 

Do  the  patrolmen  have  regular  beats  ?  How  large  are  the 
beats?  How  long  does  it  take  to  cover  them? 

How  effectively  do  the  policemen  cover  their  beats? 
What  method  is  provided  for  inspecting  the  perform- 
ance of  this  duty? 

How  many  crimes  against  person  and  property  were  re- 
ported during  the  last  six  months  or  year?  In  how 
many  cases  were  criminals  apprehended  ? 

How  many  accidents  occurred  as  a  result  of  careless  or 
reckless  driving  of  vehicles  during  the  last  six  months? 
In  how  many  cases  were  the  offenders  arrested  and  per- 
secuted ? 

How  are  the  members  of  the  police  force  appointed,  how 
removed  ? 

What  records  of  police  activity  are  kept  by  the  city? 

Are  the  streets  sufficiently  well  lighted  to  make  the  de- 
tection and  apprehension  of  criminals  reasonably  pos- 
sible by  the  policeman  on  his  beat? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  59 

Does  the  city  have  a  paid  fire  department?  How  many 
men  does  it  include? 

Does  the  city  have  a  building  or  fire  code?  Does  it  pro- 
vide fire  limits,  regulations  governing  the  construction 
of  buildings,  especially  public  halls,  factories  and  work 
shops,  inspection  and  approval  of  wiring,  storing  of  ex- 
plosive and  inflammable  material? 

How  many  fires  were  reported  during  the  last  month? 
How  many  of  these  were  due  to  defective  construction 
or  careless  handling  of  inflammable  products  ? 

How  long  does  it  take  the  department  to  respond  to  an 
alarm? 

What  kind  of  equipment  does  the  department  use? 

How  many  fires  occurred  in  which  the  loss  was  total  in- 
stead of  partial  because  of  delay  in  responding  to  the 
alarm  or  because  the  force  or  apparatus  was  not  ade- 
quate to  meet  the  situation? 

What  is  the  fire  insurance  rate  in  the  city  and  how  does  it 
compare  with  that  in  other  cities? 


VI. 

PUBLIC  EDUCATION. 

The  obligation  of  the  body  politic  to  provide  public  means 
of  education  for  its  citizens,  both  for  their  welfare  and  for 
its  own  preservation  and  advancement  has  long  been  rec- 
ognized. That  this  function  was  properly  one  to  be  ful- 
filled by  units  of  local  government  corresponding  to  the 
areas  to  be  served  by  the  educational  opportunities  offered 
has  also  long  been  accepted,  and  in  the  urban  districts  this 
unit  was  naturally  the  city  government.  So  for  a  good 
many  generations  back,  both  in  this  country  and  abroad,  we 
find  the  city  governments  charged  with  the  duty  of  provid- 
ing at  least  an  elementary  education  for  its  inhabitants  out 
of  the  public  treasury.  It  is  true  that  in  this  country,  be- 
cause of  the  generally  unsatisfactory  conditions  of  muni- 
cipal politics  and  because  of  the  immediate  personal  interest 
of  a  large  portion  of  the  community  in  as  good  a  public 
school  system  as  possible,  it  has  been  customary  to  entrust 
the  management  of  the  public  schools  to  special  boards 
separate  from  the  governing  body  of  the  city.  But  even 
where  that  is  the  case  the  local  school  area  corresponds 
in  the  case  of  cities  to  the  area  of  the  city  itself,  includes 
the  same  persons  and  imposes  burdens  on  the  same  property 
in  the  way  of  taxation,  the  function  of  raising  the  neces- 
sary funds  indeed  being  usually  in  the  hands  of  the  city 
government  even  when  the  management  of  the  funds  rais- 

60 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  61 

ed  is  not  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  city  governmental 
authorities.  However  that  may  be,  the  fact  remains  that 
the  provision  of  adequate  educational  facilities  is  a  local 
problem  for  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  city  have  a  right 
to  demand  a  satisfactory  solution,  whether  they  happen 
to  address  that  demand  to  the  city  council,  to  the  mayor, 
or  to  the  school  board. 

The  provision  of  elementary  education  is  unquestionably 
the  fundamental  educational  need  of  the  community  and 
if  conditions  were  as  they  should  be  every  child  4n  the  com- 
munity would  be  assured  of  the  opportunity  of  receiving 
free  of  charge  a  thorough  schooling  for  at  least  eight  years 
under  the  best  possible  conditions.  These  conditions  in- 
clude an  adequate  and  efficient  teaching  staff,  a  proper 
course  of  training,  and  buildings  properly  adapted  to  their 
purposes.  The  number  of  teachers  should  be  sufficiently 
large  to  permit  of  individual  attention  to  the  pupils  in  small 
classes,  preferably  not  over  twenty  to  twenty-five  in  a 
room.  The  qualifications  of  teachers  in  the  way  of  general 
education  and  special  training  for  their  particular  kind  of 
work  should  be  of  the  highest  standard  and  the  salaries 
should  be  sufficient  to  attract  teachers  of  first  rate  ability. 
The  course  of  study  should  be  modeled  along  the  approved 
modern  lines  seeking  as  far  as  possible  not  merely  to  train 
the  memory  powers  of  the  child,  but  also  and  more  especial- 
ly its  powers  of  observation  and  reasoning.  In  addition, 
moreover,  to  developing  the  child's  mental  faculties,  equal 
importance  should  be  attached  to  developing  his  body  and  his 
moral  nature.  For  both  of  these  purposes  the  scientific 
direction  of  the  child's  play  becomes  as  important  as  the 


62  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

proper  cultivation  of  his  mind.  Exercise  strengthens  the 
body  and  games  should  be  used  to  teach  him  self  control 
and  ideals  of  sportsmanship.  Simultaneously  with  the  de- 
velopment of  the  child  in  learning  to  appreciate  the  beauti- 
ful in  nature,  art,  and  music,  should  occur  the  realization 
of  the  good.  Of  particular  importance  to  the  community 
are  the  inculcation  of  proper  civic  ideals  and  the  awaken- 
ing of  a  social  consciousness  in  the  child  during  his  early 
years.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  many  of 
the  evils  of  our  American  political  life  are  due  directly  to 
a  lack  of  such  social  consciousness  on  the  part  of  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  citizenship.  A  system  of  education 
by  the  body  politic  which  fails  to  teach  its  youth  proper 
respect  and  regard  for  that  body  politic  and  a  willingness 
to  subject  the  individual  interest  to  the  community  interest 
is  obviously  a  short  sighted  and  unfortunate  policy. 

The  most  important  considerations  with  regard  to  the 
school  buildings  themselves  have  already  been  mentioned 
in  connection  with  the  question  of  public  health,  for  their 
most  usual  defects  are  in  that  regard,  particularly  over- 
crowding and  poor  ventilation,  light,  and  heating.  The 
importance  of  proper  play  grounds,  indoor  gymnasium  fa- 
cilities, wash  rooms  and  lunch  room  facilities  are  among 
the  more  important  things  to  be  kept  in  mind  with  regard 
to  the  physical  plant  of  the  public  school  system. 

One  important  consideration  with  regard  to  the  general 
problem  of  the  curriculum  or  course  of  study  is  the  matter 
of  vocational  education.  The  ordinary  elementary  educa- 
tion as  now  offered  in  the  public  schools  is  intended  to  be 
liberal  or  cultural  in  character,  that  is,  to  increase  the  gen- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  63 

eral  level  of  information  and  intelligence  of  the  child  to 
enable  him  to  get  more  out  of  life  and  to  become  a  more 
valuable  member  of  society.  It  does  not  look,  however,  to 
the  training  of  the  children  for  following  some  specific 
means  of  getting  a  livelihood  when  they  cease  to  be  merely 
consumers  and  become  also  producers  in  the  economy  of 
the  state.  It  is  now  generally  recognized,  however,  that  the 
government  (  and  we  have  seen  that  in  matters  of  elemen- 
tary public  education  this  means  the  community  comprising 
the  city)  should  even  in  the  first  eight  years  of  schooling 
offer  opportunities  for  training  in  some  particular  trade, 
that  is,  vocational  training  in  conjunction  with  the  liberal 
or  cultural  training  offered.  The  need  for  training  arises 
from  the  fact  that  the  very  great  majority  of  children  after 
having  received  the  eight  years  of  elementary  training, 
and  that  should  be  compulsory  by  state  law,  do  not  go  on 
with  further  schooling,  but  instead  enter  into  the  world's 
producing  activities  in  some  form  or  another,  frequently,  it 
is  true,  from  choice,  but  more  often  from  economic  neces- 
sity. Now  these  children,  though  better  equipped  for  the 
struggle  for  existence  by  reason  of  their  eight  years  of 
general  or  cultural  training,  are  nevertheless  not  as  well 
fitted  for  productive  work  as  they  would  be  under  a  system 
of  vocational  education.  In  this  respect  European  coun- 
tries, especially  Germany,  are  far  in  advance  of  the  United 
States,  tho  educators  in  this  country  are  favoring  this  de- 
velopment here  and  some  progress  has  already  been  made. 
A  modern  public  school  system  should  therefore  give  care- 
ful attention  to  this  problem. 

We  have  seen  that  the  provision  of  elementary  education 


64  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

is  the  primary  duty  of  the  city  and  that  all  children  should 
be  required  to  take  advantage  of  such  opportunities.  But 
the  community  should  not  stop  there.  Secondary  or  high 
school  education  should  be  offered  also  for  all  those  who 
are  able  and  willing  to  continue  their  schooling  beyond  the 
required  period.  Here  again  two  distinct  purposes  should 
be  kept  in  mind,  namely  the  general  cultural  purpose  and 
preparation  for  college,  and  the  vocational  purpose  or  train- 
ing for  earning  a  livelihood  in  some  trade  or  business  upon 
leaving  the  high  school.  It  is  not  essential  and  perhaps  not 
even  desirable  that  the  two  kinds  of  training  be  made  ab- 
solutely distinct  and  carried  on  in  different  buildings.  In- 
deed, considerations  of  economy  and  expediency  rather  point 
in  certain  circumstances  to  the  advisability  of  a  strong  cor- 
relation and  interrelation  of  the  two  kinds  of  training.  But 
in  any  case  every  city  should  have  one  or  more  high  schools 
sufficient  in  size  and  equipment  to  extend  to  all  the  youth 
of  the  city  who  care  to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities, 
either  or  both  kinds  of  courses.  It  may  be  said  in  passing 
that  cities  have  not  even  stopped  with  secondary  education 
in  their  efforts  to  afford  to  their  inhabitants  the  best  pos- 
sible educational  facilities.  There  are  instances  already, 
and  the  number  seems  to  be  increasing,  of  cities  offering 
college  and  professional  courses  in  municipal  institutions. 
But  as  the  cost  of  such  institutions  and  the  relatively  small 
proportion  of  the  citizens  who  can  take  advantage  of  such 
opportunities  when  offered  makes  the  expense  to  the  city 
a  very  large  one,  it  is  a  field  of  educational  activity  that  none 
but  the  larger  and  wealthier  cities  can  hope  to  undertake. 
One  mistake  in  the  usual  arrangement  of  the  school  year 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  65 

is  the  long  summer  vacation.  This  plan  of  a  three  months' 
break  during  the  summer  has  little  except  tradition  to  re- 
commend it.  From  the  childrens'  point  of  view  it  is  too 
long  because  it  results  in  their  forgetting  a  great  part  of 
what  they  have  learned  before  Mie  opening  of  the  new  year 
whereas  a  shorter  vacation  would  enable  them  to  refresh 
their  memories  by  connecting  up  their  new  studies  with 
what  has  gone  before,  before  the  lapse  of  time  had  let  it 
all  but  completely  escape.  Furthermore,  the  children  do 
not  need  such  a  long  rest  and  are  likely  to  become  a  nui- 
sance to  their  parents  and  the  community  and  a  bore  to 
themselves  before  the  vacation  is  half  over.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  economy  in  school  administration  it  is  of  course 
unwise  to  have  the  school  plant  lie  idle  for  one  fourth  of 
the  year  when  it  might  be  fulfilling  its  valuable  purpose  for 
much  more  of  the  time.  The  teachers,  it  is  true,  would  suf- 
fer from  a  change  in  this  regard  but  they  should  receive 
proportionately  greater  compensation  for  the  additional 
time  required.  A  month  during  the  hottest  part  of  the 
summer  would  seem  to  be  all  the  vacation  that  should  be 
given  at  one  time,  though  the  Christmas  and  spring  va- 
cations could  then  be  advantageously  lengthened  a  certain 
amount. 

We  have  considered  so  far  merely  the  provision  of  educa- 
tional facilities  for  the  city's  children,  and  that  is  of  course 
the  logical  and  sensible  place  to  begin.  At  the  same  time 
it  will  not  do  to  forget  that  of  the  large  working  popula- 
tion of  each  city,  including  not  only  men  and  women  but 
also  children  beyond  the  primary  school  age,  there  are  a 
great  many  who  never  had  in  their  early  childhood  the  op- 


66  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

portunities  which  we  have  described  as  being  the  city's  duty 
to  offer.  The  education  of  this  large  class  of  persons  is  of 
even  more  immediate  importance  to  the  city  than  is  the 
training  of  the  children  whose  influence  in  the  city's  life 
will  not  be  felt  until  the  following  generation.  But  these 
unfortunate  adults  and  youths  are  wage  earners  and  are 
therefore  unable  to  take  advantage  of  the  regular  day  school. 
Their  only  chance  for  educational  advancement  is  in  the 
possibility  of  attending  night  classes.  Obviously  too,  the 
methods  of  teaching  and  the  educational  problem  presented 
in  dealing  with  adults  who  are  at  work  all  day  and  have  no 
time  for  study  except  during  a  few  hours  at  night  must 
be  different  from  the  general  problem  of  primary  education 
considered  above.  A  different  corps  of  teachers  would  there- 
fore be  required  as  well  as  different  text  books  and  other 
means  of  instruction.  In  fact  about  the  only  facilities  that 
could  be  used  in  both  cases  are  the  school  buildings  them- 
selves. A  system  of  night  classes  for  adults,  therefore, 
requires  the  expenditure  of  considerable  additional  money, 
but  it  is  unquestionably  worth  while.  Theoretically  it  is 
true  that  if  beginning  with  the  present  generation  of  child- 
ren every  child  in  the  city  were  compelled  to  receive  the 
elementary  education  provided,  and  if  there  were  no  immi- 
gration to  the  city  of  illiterate  and  uneducated  persons  from 
outside  the  city,  the  need  for  adult  training  would  last  only 
one  generation.  But  these  are  big  "ifs"  and  do  not  affect 
the  present  problem  anyway. 

So  far  we  have  been  considering  the  commonest  methods 
of  education  namely  the  schools,  elementary  and  secondary, 
day  and  night.  There  are  however  other  important  edu- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  67 

cational  agencies  which  are  too  often  neglected  in  our 
cities  even  when  the  schools  are  pretty  well  taken  care  of. 
Chief  among  these  may  be  mentioned  public  libraries  and 
reading  rooms.  It  is  true  that  in  recent  years  the  Carnegie 
library  movement  has  enormously  increased  the  facilities 
in  this  regard  in  American  cities,  and  that  in  this  particular 
the  cities  of  this  country  are  distinctly  in  advance  of  the 
average  European  city.  At  the  same  time  the  full  possibili- 
ties of  these  libraries  as  educational  factors  have  in  a  great 
many  cases  not  been  adequately  realized.  In  many  places 
their  chief  function  has  apparently  been  to  furnish  free  op- 
portunities for  reading  light  fiction  to  the  more  or  less  well 
to  do  element  in  the  community.  The  persons  most  in  need 
of  the  educational  opportunities,  namely  the  working  classes, 
have  not  profited  as  they  should.  This  has  been  true  some- 
times because  the  libraries  were  kept  open  during  the  work- 
ing day  and  closed  at  night  the  only  time  when  workmen 
could  use  them,  sometimes  because  no  conscious  effort  was 
made  to  induce  poorer  people  to  use  the  reading  rooms  is- 
respective  of  the  shabbiness  of  the  clothes  they  might  have 
to  wear,  and  sometimes  because  no  effort  has  been  made  to 
direct  the  reading  of  persons  of  that  class  who  were  desirous 
of  reading  books  of  direct  bearing  on  their  activities  and 
conditions  of  life.  Furthermore,  the  location  of  the  public 
library  near  the  business  center  of  the  city  and  a  considera- 
ble distance  from  the  workingmen's  quarter  has  discouraged 
the  use  of  the  building  even  when  kept  open  at  night  be- 
cause the  effort  of  walking  to  the  library  and  the  expense 
of  riding  were  alike  too  great.  It  is  true  that  this  difficulty 
has  in  many  places  been  met  by  the  establishment  of  branch 


68  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

libraries  and  reading  rooms  in  various  sections  of  the  city. 
But  this  increases  the  expense  of  the  library  very  consid- 
erably by  necessitating  the  building  or  renting  of  other 
buildings  and  in  the  smaller  cities  would  for  that  reason 
seem  impossible.  There  is,  however,  an  obvious  solution 
of  the  difficulty  which  is  now  being  resorted  to  in  various 
places  with  considerable  success.  That  is  the  plan  of  mak- 
ing every  public  school  building  at  the  same  time  a  public 
library.  The  advantages  of  this  scheme  are  many  and  ob- 
vious. In  the  first  place,  school  buildings  are  or  should  be 
conveniently  accessible  to  all  and  would  therefore  bring 
the  public  library  within  reach  of  every  citizen.  In  the 
second  place  the  expense  of  building  new  buildings  or  rent- 
ing rooms  would  be  done  away  with  and  the  costly  school 
plants  ordinarily  in  use  but  a  third  of  the  twenty-four 
hours  in  the  day  would  be  engaged  in  serving  educational 
ends  a  much  longer  time.  The  money  which  it  costs  to 
erect  and  maintain  and  manage  an  elaborate  public  library 
building  with  branch  libraries  and  reading  rooms  could 
then  be  used  to  much  better  advantage  from  an  educational 
point  of  view  in  equipping  and  running  these  public  school 
libraries. 

In  addition  to  public  libraries  we  may  mention  as  im- 
portant educational  and  also  recreational  agencies  museums 
and  botanical  and  zo-ological  gardens.  Natural  history  and 
art  museums  can  be  made  to  have  a  very  significant  func- 
tion in  training  the  scientific  and  aesthetic  tastes  of  the 
public  and  every  city  should  make  use  of  them  even  if  it 
be  only  on  a  very  small  scale.  Zoological  and  botanical  gar- 
dens are  especially  valuable  as  they  combine  with  the  educa- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  69 

tional  features  the  advantages  of  public  parks  in  a  recrea- 
tional way.  Here  also  it  would  be  well  to  make  use  so  far 
as  possible  of  facilities  in  the  way  of  buildings  and  grounds 
offered  by  the  school  plant,  particularly  in  the  matter  of 
museums,  though  small  botanical  gardens  might  ad- 
vantageously be  maintained  adjacent  to  some  of  the 
school  buildings.  Finally  the  value  of  free  public  lectures 
in  the  field  of  education  should  not  be  overlooked. 
Here  again  a  happy  combination  of  education  and 
recreation  can  be  effected,  for  especially  by  the  use  of  mov- 
ing pictures  it  is  now  possible  to  teach  a  great  deal  of  geog- 
raphy, natural  history,  and  science  in  general  in  a  most  in- 
teresting and  valuable  manner.  The  school  buildings  here 
also  offer  the  most  advantageous  and  natural  localities  for 
such  lectures  and  thus  we  see  that  almost  the  entire  educa- 
tional activity  of  the  city  in  all  its  varied  aspects  can  be 
centered  about  the  permanent  school  plant  with  relatively 
little  additional  cost  and  with  greater  effect.  The  reflex 
effect  in  the  willingness  of  the  tax  payers  to  support  the 
school  system  when  they  see  how  fully  and  effectively  its 
equipment  is  employed  must  also  be  reckoned  among  the 
educational  gains  to  be  realized  by  such  a  plan. 

Closely  related  to  public  lectures  in  purpose  is  the  pro- 
vision of  free  concerts  in  the  parks  during  fair  weather  or 
in  municipal  auditoriums  in  separate  buildings  or  better 
still  in  the  various  school  buildings.  Such  concerts  should 
be  conducted  with  a  view  to  the  educational  value  of  the 
music  offered  as  well  as  to  its  popularity. 


70  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

How  many  children  between  the  ages  of  six  and  fourteen 
years  are  not  in  the  public  schools  ?  Is  attendance  com- 
pulsory and  if  so  how  is  it  enforced? 

Is  the  school  board  a  separate  body  or  is  it  responsible  to 
the  mayor  or  council  of  the  city  ?  Does  the  school  board 
have  independent  taxing  power? 

How  many  chcildren  can  properly  be  taken  care  of  in  the 
primary  or  grade  schools?  How  large  are  the  classes? 

How  many  hours  of  work  are  expected  of  the  teachers? 
What  training  is  demanded  ?  How  are  they  appointed  ? 
What  salary  do  they  receive?  How  do  the  salaries  com- 
pare with  what  such  teachers  could  earn  in  business? 

What  attempts  are  made  to  adapt  the  instruction  to  indi- 
vidual needs  of  the  children?  Are  the  children  ex- 
amined as  to  their  normality?  What  is  done  with  or 
for  abnormal  or  subnormal  children? 

Are  children  given  regular  instruction  in  physical  train- 
ing? How  much  time  is  allowed  for  intervals  of  play? 
Is  there  a  supervisor  or  director  of  athletics  ? 

What  instruction  is  offered  in  ethics,  that  is  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  right  and  wrong?  What  training  is  offered  in 
citizenship  or  social  ethics  ? 

What  attention  is  paid  to  music  and  art  in  the  course 
of  study? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  71 

Are  the  school  buildings  made  as  attractive  as  possible 
in  architecture,  interior  facilities  and  general  beauty 
and  cleanliness  of  surroundings? 

Is  any  vocational  instruction  offered  in  the  primary  or 
grade  schools? 

Does  the  city  support  an  adequate  number  of  secondary  or 
high  schools? 

What  is  the  condition  in  these  schools  as  to  overcrowd- 
ing, condition  of  buildings  and  grounds,  training  and 
salary  of  teachers,  etc.? 

What  vocational  training  is  offered  in  the  secondary 
schools? 

Are  night  classes  conducted  in  the  city  schools  offering  in- 
struction to  adults  and  others  unable  to  attend  the  day 
schools?  What  effort  is  made  to  induce  the  persons 
who  might  profit  thereby  to  come  to  these  classes? 

What  facilities  are  offered  in  the  city  in  the  way  of  pub- 
lic libraries  and  reading  rooms? 

During  what  hours  of  the  day  is  the  library  open?  To 
what  extent  do  working  men  and  women  use  the  libra- 
ry? Are  special  facilities  in  the  way  of  appropriate 
books  for  that  class  of  readers  provided  and  what  steps 
are  taken  to  acquaint  them  with  such  facilities?  How 
are  the  library  and  reading  rooms  located  with  regard 
to  the  homes  of  the  laboring  class? 


72  PUBLIC  EDUCATION 

Would  the  school  buildings  offer  conveniently  located 
reading  rooms  for  that  class  of  readers? 

What  natural  history  or  art  exhibits  does  the  city  main- 
tain ?  Does  it  use  its  parks  as  botanical  gardens  ?  Does 
it  maintain  a  zoological  garden? 

Does  the  city  or  the  school  authority  offer  free  public 
lectures  on  subjects  of  interest  and  value? 

Does  the  city  provide  for  free  concerts  in  parks  or  pub- 
lic buildings? 


VII. 

PUBLIC  MORALS. 

The  city  is  frequently  denounced  as  a  hot  bed  of  sin  and 
iniquity  where  the  morally  deficient  are  confirmed  in  wrong 
doing  and  where  the  innocent  are  led  astray.  This  whole- 
sale denunciation  of  the  morality  of  city  dwellers  is  grossly 
exaggerated  and  not  in  accordance  with  the  real  facts.  In- 
deed it  has  been  suggested  that  the  supposed  inferiority  of 
the  city  as  compared  with  the  country  in  this  respect  has  its 
basis  if  not  wholly  at  least  largely  in  prejudice  and  that  the 
morality  of  the  city  dweller  is  as  high  as  that  of  his  country 
cousin,  or  even  higher  if  this  latter  is  to  be  judged  from  the 
way  he  acts  when  he  comes  to  the  city  away  from  embar- 
rassing acquaintances.  However  that  may  be  as  matter  of 
relative  morality,  it  needs  little  proof  to  show  that  moral 
conditions  in  the  city  are  not  all  that  they  might  be  and  that 
in  many  respects  they  are  little  short  of  scandalous.  An  ex- 
amination into  the  reason  for  this  condition  of  things  would 
seem  to  show  that  the  chief  explanation  for  the  open  violation 
of  morality,  used  here  in  the  sense  of  ordinary  decency,  lies 
in  the  fact  that  its  encouragement  and  promotion  prove 
very  profitable  sources  of  income  to  persons  who  want  to 
use  them.  In  fact  if  we  consider  the  places  of  worst  repute 
in  the  matter  of  offending  against  the  public  morals  such 
as  cheap  theatres  and  other  exhibitions,  saloons,  dance  halls 
and  houses  of  prostitution  they  are  all  most  profitable  kinds 

73 


74  PUBLIC  MORALS 

of  investments  from  a  pecuniary  point  of  view.  As  the 
element  of  profit  from  all  these  sources  arises,  moreover, 
out  of  the  congestion  of  population  in  the  city  it  not  only 
gives  the  city  the  right  but  imposes  upon  it  the  duty  of  pre- 
venting as  far  as  possible  the  pursuit  of  these  undertakings 
to  the  detriment  of  the  general  moral  tone  of  the  com- 
munity. 

Now  the  question  as  to  how  far  the  city,  or  any  other 
governmental  agency  should  attempt  to  impress  and  enforce 
moral  standards  upon  its  citizens  is  a  most  difficult  one.  A 
very  practical  consideration  arises  immediately  from  the 
fact  that  any  attempt  to  set  up  a  standard  of  right  and 
wrong  by  law  which  does  not  appeal  to  the  moral  sense  of 
a  considerable  portion  of  the  community  is  simply  unen- 
forceable. Not  only,  however,  is  such  a  law  unenforceed 
and  therefore  useless  but  its  reflex  moral  effect  on  the  com- 
munity is  worse  than  if  it  had  never  been  passed,  for  it  paves 
the  way  for  corruption  in  the  police  force  in  the  way  of  sell- 
ing exemptions  and  leads  to  that  general  contempt  for 
all  law  which  is  said  to  be  characteristic  of  the  average 
American.  Careful  students  of  this  subject  have  attributed 
both  the  wide  spread  corruption  in  our  police  and  prosecut- 
ing machinery  and  the  general  disregard  for  law  to  this  at- 
tempt on  the  part  of  active  minorities  or  even  small  ma- 
jorities to  impose  their  moral  standards  on  a  large 
passive  or  hostile  portion  of  the  community.  The  first 
consideration  then  to  be  kept  in  mind  with  regard 
to  morals  legislation  is  that  there  should  be  a  strong 
general  sentiment  in  the  community  against  the  evil 
attacked  by  law.  Obviously  this  does  not  mean  that 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  75 

every  citizen  should  be  convinced  of  the  evil  in  question  or 
even  that  only  a  very  few  should  be  of  different  opinion. 
It  does  mean,  however,  that  there  should  be  a  very  substan- 
tial agreement  on  the  part  of  the  higher  and  more  influen- 
tial class  of  the  citizens,  amounting  to  a  strong  majority  of 
the  effective  community  opinion  as  a  whole  that  the  evil  in 
question  is  an  evil  and  should  be  remedied.  Now  it  may  be 
asked  how  is  the  moral  condition  of  our  cities  to  be  improved 
if  legislation  is  always  to  lag  behind  active  public  opinion. 
To  this  it  must  be  answered  that  it  is  the  function  of  moral 
teaching  in  the  homes  the  schools  and  the  churches  to  raise 
the  moral  standards  of  the  community  to  the  point  that  there 
be  a  strong  majority  sentiment  against  a  given  evil.  Then 
and  only  then  should  legislation  be  attempted,  for  to  at- 
tempt it  before  such  a  stage  has  been  reached  does  more 
harm  than  good,  as  experience  has  repeatedly  demonstrated. 
It  is  clear  that  the  question  of  morals  legislation  must  in 
large  measure  be  a  purely  local  question  to  be  determined 
by  the  state  of  local  public  opinion,  for  communities  vary 
enormously  in  the  standards  of  conduct  to  which  they  ad- 
here. A  good  illustration  may  be  seen  in  the  matter  of  Sun- 
day quiet.  Laws  enforcing  the  quiet  observance  of  the 
Sabbath  which  are  successfully  enforced  in  many  a  New 
England  town  and  village  break  down  when  tried  in  a  cos- 
mopolitan city  like  New  York  or  Chicago.  It  is  for  this  rea- 
son also  that  state  legislation  with  regard  to  many  moral 
or  quasi-moral  questions  is  so  dangerous  and  largely  un- 
successful. It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  for  in- 
stance that  a  state  prohibition  law  is  almost  sure  to  be  a  dead 
letter  in  a  city  in  which  a  majority  of  the  community  do  not 


76  PUBLIC  MORALS 

believe  in  prohibition.  Must  we  then  say  that  since  the 
standards  of  public  morals  vary  for  each  city  there  are  no 
tests  to  determine  whether  a  city  is  doing  its  duty  in  this 
regard  except  by  an  examination  of  local  opinion?  No. 
There  are  certain  questions  about  which  there  is  such  a  gen- 
eral if  not  indeed  universal  consensus  of  opinion  that  we 
may  set  them  down  as  proper  fields  of  governmental  action. 
So  for  instance  all  the  offences  against  person  and  property 
such  as  murder,  theft,  arson,  etc.,  are  all  acts  that  are  for- 
bidden by  moral  standards  long  since  set  up  and  accepted 
by  the  great  majority  of  the  people  in  every  community.  In 
fact  these  offences  are  not  even  regarded  under  the  head 
of  offences  against  the  public  morals,  but  as  crimes  against 
society  about  which  there  can  be  no  difference  of  opinion. 
Public  morals  in  the  sense  in  which  we  are  here  using  it 
means  in  effect  public  decency  and  usually  connotes  some 
phase  of  sexual  morality.  Even  in  this  field  it  is  possible  to 
find  a  common  ground  on  which  to  base  an  obligation  on  the 
public  authorities  of  every  city,  which  would  be  approved 
'by  the  great  majority  of  the  community.  This  common 
ground  is  that  immorality  particularly  in  matters  of  sex 
Should  not  be  exhibited  publicly  and  should  not  be  used  for 
the  temptation  of  the  young  and  innocent.  In  this  connec- 
tion we  may  take  up  the  chief  offenders  against  public  de- 
cency in  this  regard  in  the  movies,  theaters,  and  other  public 
exhibitions,  in  prints  and  pictures  including  advertisements, 
and  in  public  dance  halls.  Saloons  and  houses  of  prostitu- 
tion present  peculiar  conditions  and  will  be  considered  sepa- 
rately. 

First   then    with    regard    to    public    exhibitions    of    all 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  77 

kinds  it  is  obviously  the  duty  of  the  city  to  prevent  the 
production  of  exhibitions  which  are  lewd,  obscene,  vulgar 
or  suggestive.  Here  again  a  difficulty  arises  in  that 
people  have  different  ideas  as  to  what  these  terms  mean 
and  what  productions  could  be  so  termed.  On  the  one 
hand  there  are  people  who  claim  that  to  the  pure  all  things 
are  pure  and  who  would  therefore  bar  virtually  no  kind  of 
exhibition.  At  the  other  extreme  there  are  people  with  an 
excess  of  prudishness  who  would  rule  out  our  masterpieces 
of  literature  and  art  on  the  ground  that  they  offended  their 
moral  sensibilities  and  modesty.  Between  these  two  ex- 
tremes somewhere  lies  the  mean  that  would  represent  the 
generally  accepted  opinion  of  the  community.  The  best  way 
to  secure  this  general  opinion  would  seem  to  be  to  have 
a  committee  of  censors  composed  of  various  elements  in  the 
community,  but  most  largely  of  mothers  with  children  in 
their  early  teens.  They  would  be  more  likely  to  reflect  a 
general  conservative  opinion  than  would  a  chief  of  police,  a 
mayor,  a  single  censor  or  a  committee  of  men  married  or  un- 
married, while  elderly  unmarried  ladies  of  the  better  ele- 
ment in  the  community  would  probably  evidence  a  severity 
beyond  that  demanded  by  the  fair  average  in  the  communi- 
ty. Such  a  board  of  censors  should  be  required  to  pass  on 
every  questionable  production  that  might  be  exhibited  in 
the  city  before  a  license  or  permit  to  produce  it  be  issued. 
A  board  of  that  kind  would  be  a  necessity  with  regard  to 
exhibitions  such  as  moving  pictures  even  though  they  are 
passed  by  a  national  board  of  censorship  for  the  reason  that 
the  local  standard  of  decency  may  be  much  stricter  in  a 
given  city  than  that  represented  by  such  a  national  board, 


78  PUBLIC  MORALS 

and  we  have  seen  that  such  questions  should  be  determined 
according  to  local  standards. 

Not  only  should  the  regular  places  of  entertainment  be 
subjected  to  this  scrutiny  but  especially  also  traveling  exhi- 
bitions such  as  those  that  come  with  the  circus  or  the  street 
or  county  fair,  for  these  exhibitions  are  frequent  offenders 
against  public  decency.  A  distinction  might  very  properly 
be  made  between  productions  that  might  not  offend  adults 
but  would  be  very  improper  for  children,  and  productions 
that  are  objectionable  from  both  points  of  view.  Another 
common  source  of  danger  in  the  field  of  sexual  morals  is  ob- 
scene printed  material  of  all  kinds  including  pictures  and  ad- 
vertisements. Every  place  of  sale  of  printed  matter  should 
be  licensed  and  subject  to  supervision  by  a  board  of  censors 
with  power  to  order  the  discontinuance  of  the  exhibition  or 
sale  of  such  matter  as  is  considered  unfit  for  public  dissem- 
ination. Medical  advertisements  in  papers  and  periodicals 
are  among  the  most  common  offenders  against  common  de- 
cency. Of  course  all  public  bill  boards  and  street  car  adver- 
tisements can  easily  be  controlled  by  the  city  in  this  regard. 

Among  the  commonest  sources  of  danger  to  the  youth 
of  the  city  and  very  general  offenders  against  the  public  de- 
cency are  public  dance  halls.  The  public  dance  hall  exerts  a 
powerful  attraction  over  the  young  of  both  sexes  and  seems 
to  supply  a  very  real  want  in  a  recreational  way.  But  the 
usual  concomitants  of  the  public  dance  hall,  namely  drunken- 
ness and  sexual  immorality  have  brought  these  places  into 
such  disrepute  that  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  them  virtually 
forbidden.  A  better  method  of  dealing  with  them,  however, 
would  seem  to  be  to  regulate  them  in  the  interests  of  de- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  79 

cency  rather  than  to  destroy  them  as  possibilities  of  recrea- 
tion. In  fact  in  a  number  of  cities  the  proposition  has  been 
made  and  in  some  cases  adopted  to  provide  municipal  dance 
halls  under  proper  supervision  for  the  purpose  of  providing 
a  popular  but  safe  form  of  amusement  and  recreation.  That 
would  seem  to  be  a  very  sensible  way  to  deal  with  the  prob- 
lem and  can  be  recommended  to  all  cities  for  trial.  In  any 
case,  however,  the  unregulated  dance  hall  should  not  be  per- 
mitted to  exist  for  it  is  responsible  for  a  good  part  of  the 
sexual  immorality  that  exists  in  the  city.  Among  the  regula- 
tions that  should  be  insisted  upon  for  such  places  of  resort 
should  be  the  absolute  prohibition  of  the  sale  of  intoxicants 
and  the  prevention  of  indecent  dances  or  positions  on  the 
dance  floor,  as  well  as  the  exclusion  of  all  persons  guilty  of 
indecent  behavior  in  the  hall  or  known  to  be  of  bad  moral 
character. 

Saloons  present  one  of  the  most  controverted  problems  in 
our  American  politics,  municipal  and  state,  and  in  recent 
times  it  is  even  being  emphasized  in  national  politics.  It  is 
of  course  not  our  purpose  here  to  enter  into  a  discussion  of 
the  relative  merits  of  unrestricted  consumption  of  alcohol, 
temperance,  and  total  abstinence,  as  rules  of  personal  con- 
duct. It  is  only  as  a  question  of  governmental  interference 
that  it  falls  within  the  purview  of  such  a  work  as  this.  But 
even  the  question  of  license  or  prohibition  is  not  one  that 
can  be  discussed  to  advantage  here.  The  prohibition  ques- 
tion has  become  one  of  the  most  burning  and  bitter  of  all 
controversies  and  as  a  question  of  controversial  politics 
cannot  be  taken  up  here.  But  from  the  point  of  view  of 
governmental  administration  it  is  necessary  to  point  out 


80  PUBLIC  MORALS 

again  that  whatever  may  be  the  wisdom  as  a  matter  of  pub- 
lic policy  to  prohibit  to  the  fullest  possible  extent  the  con- 
sumption of  alcohol,  such  prohibition  cannot  be  successful 
and  therefore  wise  unless  a  very  substantial  majority  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  community  in  which  and  by  which  it  is 
to  be  enforced  are  actively  convinced  of  its  wisdom  and  aid 
in  its  enforcement.  For  reasons  that  have  already  been 
mentioned  it  is  undoubtedly  a  mistake  to  attempt  to  en- 
force such  prohibition  in  a  city  where  a  respectable  pro- 
portion, not  necessarily  a  numerical  majority  however,  of 
the  community  do  not  believe  in  such  restrictions  on  indi- 
vidual freedom  of  action.  The  question  of  prohibition  or 
no  prohibition  becomes  therefore  again  a  local  question  to 
be  settled  in  each  community  according  to  the  state  of  pub- 
lic consciousness  on  the  matter  in  that  community.  But  as 
in  the  case  of  some  other  of  the  questions  of  public  morals 
considered  above  there  are  some  principles  on  which  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  a  substantial  majority  of  good  citizens  in 
all  communities  are  agreed  even  with  regard  to  the  liquor 
question. 

The  most  fundamental  of  these  is  that  if  the  sale  of  liquor 
is  not  to  be  prohibited  it  is  at  least  to  be  subjected  to  the 
most  careful  and  effective  kind  of  supervision  for  the  pro- 
tection of  minors  and  the  preservation  of  order.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  not  by  any  means  entire  agreement  as  to  just 
how  to  make  these  regulations  most  effective.  So  for  in- 
stance let  us  take  the  question  of  publicity.  In  some  places 
saloons  are  forbidden  to  have  curtains  in  the  windows  in 
order  that  everyone  may  see  who  is  patronizing  the  saloon. 
In  other  cases  the  opposite  rule  has  been  adopted  and  saloons 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  81 

are  required  to  have  screens  or  curtains.  Again  some  per- 
sons maintain  that  the  chief  evil  of  drinking  in  the  Amer- 
can  saloon  is  the  fact  that  the  alcohol  is  consumed  with  such 
rapidity  instead  of  drinking  a  little  slowly  and  making  it 
last  over  a  considerable  length  of  time  as  is  the  custom  in 
European  cafes.  Accordingly  they  would  favor  making  the 
saloon  a  real  workingman's  club  by  providing  it  with  tables 
and  music  and  other  attractions  to  induce  him  to  take  his 
liquor  more  moderately  and  in  less  haste.  Other  people, 
however,  contend  that  the  saloon  should  be  made  as  unat- 
tractive as  possible  and  would  forbid  music  and  tables  and 
even  the  meagre  comfort  of  a  foot  rail.  So  there  are  many 
matters  connected  with  the  problem  of  regulation  on  which 
honest  people  would  disagree  or  question  the  expediency 
of  efficacy  of  such  regulatory  measures. 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  some  regulations  which 
would  probably  receive  general  approval  as  most  necessary 
measures.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  limitation 
of  the  number  of  saloons,  the  granting  of  a  non-transfera- 
ble license  only  to  applicants  whose  personal  character  has 
been  investigated  and  vouched  for  by  responsible  citizens, 
the  requirement  of  a  heavy  bond  to  be  forfeited  for  failure 
to  comply  with  all  the  requirements  of  the  law  in  addition 
to  revocation  of  the  license,  the  exclusion  of  saloons  from 
the  neighborhood  of  schools  and  churches,  the  right  of  prop- 
erty owners  in  any  block  to  exclude  by  majority  vote  sa- 
loons from  that  block,  the  absolute  prohibition  of  sale  to 
minors  and  drunkards  at  the  entire  risk  of  the  saloon  keep- 
er under  civil  and  criminal  liability,  the  closing  of  the  sa- 
loons at  an  early  hour  in  the  evening,  the  exclusion  of  women 


82  PUBLIC  MORALS 

and  the.  prohibition  of  rented  sleeping  apartments  and  pri- 
vate rooms  in  connection  with  or  in  the  same  building  as 
the  saloon.  Under  a  system  of  rigid  regulation  of  that  kind 
most  of  the  evils  of  the  saloon  on  which  all  or  at  least  most 
people  are  agreed  could  be  eliminated,  leaving  only  the  in- 
herent evils  of  alcohol  consumption,  the  proper  treatment 
of  which  as  we  have  seen  is  a  controverted  question  of  policy 
at  the  present  time.  Whenever  the  time  comes  that  the 
general  community  opinion  demands  with  sufficient  force 
the  abolition  of  the  saloon  instead  of  its  regulation,  the 
problem  becomes  of  course  much  simpler. 

The  problem  of  the  social  evil  is  one  of  the  oldest  and 
most  difficult  of  municipal  problems.  Prostitution  seems  to 
have  been  a  feature  of  city  life  as  long  as  we  have  any  defi- 
nite knowledge  of  city  life  at  all.  It  is  essentially  a  muni- 
cipal problem  both  because  commercialized  vice  can  flourish 
only  under  urban  conditions  and  because  its  successful 
regulation  depends  on  the  state  of  community  feeling  with 
regard  to  the  matter.  The  problem  of  prostitution  in  the 
cities  is  a  more  serious  and  difficult  one  even  than  the  liquor 
problem.  More  serious  because  the  injurious  moral  and 
physical  effects  of  the  evil  do  not  as  in  the  case  of  the  con- 
sumption of  alcohol  depend  for  their  seriousness  largely  on 
the  immoderate  indulgence  in  the  physical  appetite,  more 
difficult  because  its  existence  is  based  on  the  most  funda- 
mental of  human  appetites  and  passions,  namely,  the  sex  in- 
stinct, stronger  and  more  universal  by  far  than  the  desire 
for  drink.  It  is  like  the  drink  evil,  however,  in  that  its 
ravages  and  curses  fall  almost  inevitably  not  only  on  the 
actual  participants  themselves  but  on  countless  innocent 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  83 

persons  and  unborn  generations.  In  fact  it  is  this  feature 
of  the  social  evil,  that  is,  its  effect  on  public  health,  which 
seems  to  offer  the  most  hopeful  ground  for  its  successful 
ultimate  eradication,  for  as  to  this  feature  of  the  evil,  facts 
and  statistics  are  abundant  and  conclusive  and  leave  no 
room  for  individual  opinion. 

In  its  purely  moral  or  religious  aspects  the  eradication 
of  the  social  evil  meets  with  the  same  difficulty  as  is  encoun- 
tered in  the  case  of  the  liquor  problem,  namely  the  fact 
that  a  large  portion  of  every  community,  at  least  of  the 
male  portion  of  every  community,  is  either  unconvinced  as 
to  its  being  morally  wrong,  or  is  certain  that  because  of  its 
fundamental  appeal  to  the  strongest  animal  instinct,  it  is 
hopeless  to  try  to  combat  it.  Under  such  conditions  it  may 
safely  be  said  that  the  attempt  to  legislate  the  social  evil 
out  of  existence  is  bound  to  be  a  failure  and  worse  than 
a  failure.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  in  this  regard  the 
situation  in  continental  European  countries  with  that  in  this 
country.  It  is  probably  true  that  there  is  not  as  general  a 
condemnation  by  the  so-called  better  classes  in  Europe  of 
the  social  evil  as  there  is  in  this  country  among  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  population.  At  the  same  time  there 
is  not  usually  any  hypocritical  attempt  to  satisfy  any  such 
feeling  that  may  exist  by  forbidding  the  existence  of  pros- 
titution on  paper  but  permitting  it  in  fact,  as  is  the  normal 
case  in  American  cities.  Instead  of  that  there  is  a  frank  re- 
alization of  its  existence  in  laws  which  provide  rigid  inspec- 
tion and  regulation  and  are  rigidly  enforced. 

It  is  believed  therefore  that  until  a  community  has  come 
to  have  a  sufficiently  general  and  powerful  opposition  to  the 


84  PUBLIC  MORALS 

continuance  of  the  evil  as  a  result  of  a  realization  of  its 
moral  and  physical  dangers  to  enable  it  really  to  eradicate  it 
from  the  city,  the  wiser  course  to  pursue  from  every  point 
of  view  is  to  face  the  facts  as  they  are  and  to  combat  their 
unfortunate  consequences  as  well  as  can  be  by  regulation, 
rather  than  to  rest  in  a  sham  security  born  of  having  pro- 
hibitory enactments  in  the  statute  books  which  are  freely 
violated  with  impunity.  The  task  of  instructing  the  com- 
munity in  the  terrible  consequences  of  the  continuance  of 
prostitution,  at  least  on  its  public  health  side,  may  very 
properly  be  attacked  by  the  health  authorities  of  the  city, 
while  the  moral  and  social  aspects  are  treated  by  the  parents, 
teachers,  and  preachers  of  the  community. 

The  proper  regulation  of  the  social  evil  until  such  time 
as  the  community  is  ready  and  able  to  eliminate  it  either 
wholly  or  at  least  in  large  part,  presents  some  more  or  less 
obvious  features  and  others  that  are  more  difficult  and  to 
a  certain  extent  controversial.  Among  the  fundamental 
regulatory  measures  which  practically  every  community 
would  be  ready  to  insist  upon  and  which,  therefore,  could 
be  effectively  enforced  are  the  prevention  of  solicitation  in 
all  forms  both  on  the  part  of  prostitutes  and  even  more  on 
the  part  of  keepers  of  resorts  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
prostitutes,  all  forms  of  street  walking  and  public  adver- 
tising. It  is  not  necessary  of  course  to  mention  the  need 
of  penal  measures  for  the  punishment  of  compulsion  or  in- 
voluntary detention  for  immoral  purposes  commonly  known 
as  "white  slavery."  The  registration  of  all  prostitutes, 
compulsory  medical  examination,  treatment,  and  isolation, 
and  the  strictest  supervision  of  all  houses  of  ill  fame  are 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  85 

among  the  measures  which  have  been  commonly  adopted, 
though  not,  it  must  be  said,  with  the  results  that  might 
have  been  desired.  One  troublesome  and  much  disputed 
question  in  the  regulation  of  the  social  evil  has  been  the 
question  of  seggregation.  There  are  many  considerations 
involved  in  the  determination  of  the  advisability  of  a  seg- 
gregated  vice  district  with  restriction  of  all  prostitution  to 
such  a  district.  Some  of  these  considerations  are  economic, 
some  social,  some  administrative,  and  some  refer  to  the 
effect  of  such  a  measure  on  the  ultimate  problem  of  eradica- 
tion. There  is,  furthermore,  neither  a  consensus  of  opinion 
by  theorists  nor  a  correspondence  in  the  testimony  secured 
from  places  where  the  system  of  segregation  has  beeen 
tried.  Viewed  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  possibility  of 
effective  police  and  sanitary  supervision  and  regulation  the 
segregated  district  has  much  to  recommend  it.  It  may  be 
said  also  that  a  good  deal  of  the  opposition  encountered 
against  segregation  proposals  comes  from  persons  whose 
moral  sense  is  shocked  by  the  apparent  official  recognition  of 
the  social  evil  involved  in  this  and  all  other  regulation,  but 
whose  conscience  is  not  disturbed  by  the  flagrant  violations 
of  a  law  purporting  to  prohibit  prostitution,  although  such 
violations  with  a  corresponding  freedom  from  desirable 
regulation  and  restriction  may  be  much  more  dangerous 
from  every  point  of  view  than  is  the  recognition  of  the  ex- 
istence of  the  evil  and  insistence  on  the  fullest  possible  reg- 
ulation. 


86  PUBLIC  MORALS 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  PUBLIC  MORALS 

Does  the  city  have  a  censor  for  passing  on  public  pro- 
ductions and  exhibitions?  What  powers  does  he  pos- 
sess ?  Are  all  places  of  exhibit  licensed  for  the  purpose 
of  control  in  the  interest  of  public  morals  and  decency? 

What  supervision,  if  any,  is  exercised  by  the  city  over  the 
character  of  printed  matter  and  pictures  exhibited  for 
sale  in  the  city? 

Are  bill  boards  and  other  public  advertisements  controll- 
ed in  the  interests  of  decency? 

Are  there  public  dance  halls  or  pavillions  in  the  city? 
How  are  they  supervised?  Are  there  any  restrictions 
as  to  the  sale  of  liquor,  the  exclusion  of  children,  the 
prevention  of  indecent  dances  and  acts,  the  removal  and 
restriction  on  attendance  of  persons  known  to  have  a 
bad  moral  character,  or  to  be  present  for  immoral  pur-' 
poses  ? 

Are  saloons  permitted  in  the  city?  If  forbidden  by  law 
are  they  eradicated  in  fact?  If  not  forbidden,  how  are 
they  regulated  as  to  manner  of  obtaining  a  license, 
hours  of  closing,  exclusion  of  minors  and  drunkards, 
location,  exclusion  from  districts  by  vote  of  the  prop- 
erty owners? 

Are  the  saloons  a  center  of  public  disturbance?  Do  they 
require  special  police  supervision? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  87 

What  provision  do  city  ordinances  make  with  regard  to 
prostitution?  Is  it  effectively  suppressed?  If  not  to 
what  extent  is  it  regulated  in  the  interests  of  public 
health  and  morals? 

Are  street  walking  and  public  solicitation  effectually  pre- 
vented ? 

Is  there  a  restricted  district  and  if  so  what  seems  to  be  its 
effect  on  the  evil,  especially  as  regards  publicity  and  at- 
tractiveness to  boys  under  age? 


VIII. 

SOCIAL  WELFARE 

The  preventive  or  negative  side  of  governmental  activity 
as  exemplified  in  the  protection  of  person  and  property 
against  violation  by  others  and  the  securing  of  each  in  the 
enjoyment  of  his  life,  liberty,  and  property  was  the  earliest 
function  to  develop  in  cities  as  well  as  in  all  other  units  of 
government.  This  was  of  course  natural  as  the  first  condi- 
tion of  a  civilized  society  is  the  preservation  of  order  and  the 
elimination  of  persons  and  conditions  conducive  to  disorder. 
There  is,  however,  another  side  to  governmental  activity 
which  has  attained  a  general  recognition  only  in  compara- 
tively recent  times,  but  which  is  now  coming  rightly  to  be  re- 
garded as  of  equal  importance  for  the  preservation  and  im- 
provement of  society  with  the  mere  protection  of  life,  liberty 
and  property  against  invasion  by  act  of  individual  members. 
This  new  activity  may  best  be  termed  the  furtherance  of  the 
social  welfare  by  means  of  positive  measures  intended  pri- 
marily for  the  benefit  of  the  laboring  classes  in  the  com- 
munity. It  is  true  that  an  important  part  of  this  activity 
also  presents  a  negative  aspect  in  the  necessity  of  prohib- 
iting certain  kinds  of  actions  and  imposing  restrictions  on 
certain  others  which  formerly  had  not  been  regarded  as 
properly  subject  to  governmental  regulation.  But  even 
these  measures  have  a  positive  aspect  in  that  they  are  in- 
tended to  further  the  economic  and  social  welfare  of  a  par- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  89 

ticular  class  in  the  community  who  are  not  sufficiently  pro- 
tected in  their  economic  interests  by  the  general  prohibitory 
or  restrictive  measures  of  the  state  mentioned  above  and 
who  by  reason  of  their  economic  and  social  condition  are  un- 
able to  secure  by  themselves  that  minimum  of  the  necessi- 
ties and  comforts  of  life  which  is  now  coming  to  be  con- 
sidered as  the  right  of  every  honest,  industrious  and  produc- 
tive citizen  as  well  as  of  those  who  by  misfortune  are  in- 
capacitated from  earning  a  livelihood  by  their  own  efforts. 
Closely  related  to  the  problem  of  the  care  of  the  dependants 
and  generally  unfit  is  the  treatment  of  the  criminals  and 
other  persons  who  are  considered  dangerous  to  society  and 
cannot  be  permitted  to  remain  at  large.  Under  the  general 
head  of  the  social  welfare  activities  of  the  city  we  may  there- 
fore consider  briefly  the  following  topics :  Housing  condi- 
tions; working  conditions;  recreation  facilities;  poor  re- 
lief; corrections. 

The  importance  of  proper  housing  regulations  has  been 
touched  on  in  its  public  health  aspect  under  the  discussion 
of  that  branch  of  municipal  activity.  Undue  congestion, 
lack  of  proper  amount  of  light,  and  a  want  of  proper  sanitary 
conveniences  all  have  a  direct  bearing  on  the  public  health 
problem,  not  only  because  such  conditions  are  in  themselves 
destructive  of  the  health  of  the  inhabitants  but  also  because 
the  check  of  contagious  diseases  in  such  tenements  is  next 
to  impossible  and  the  health  of  the  whole  community  is 
thereby  seriously  jeopardized.  But  public  health  considera- 
tions are  not  the  only  ones  that  demand  municipal  regula- 
tion of  housing  conditions,  though  they  are  sufficient  in 
themselves  to  require  a  housing  code.  Crowded  conditions 


90  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

and  excessive  rent  play  their  important  part  in  lowering  the 
morality  of  the  inhabitants.  Where  whole  families  are 
crowded  into  one  room  the  natural  sense  of  shame  which  is 
an  effective  protector  of  common  decency  between  the  sexes 
becomes  dull  and  blunted.  Where,  further,  as  is  not  rarely 
the  case,  a  night  lodger  is  taken  in  under  such  conditions  for 
a  few  cents  to  help  meet  the  expenses,  the  way  is  paved,  as 
abundant  testimony  shows,  for  leading  the  young  girls  of 
the  family  into  lives  of  shame.  Furthermore  the  cheap 
crowded  tenements  are  often  the  abodes  of  pickpockets, 
petty  thieves  and  other  members  of  the  criminal  classes 
daily  contact  with  whom  destroys  all  moral  sense  of  the 
children  and  tends  to  make  them  also  outcasts  of  society. 
From  a  social  point  of  view  furthermore  the  destruction  of 
all  possibility  of  a  sane  and  helpful  family  life  is  not  without 
serious  effect  on  the  character  of  the  children  born  and 
reared  in  such  tenements.  This  therefore  is  an  instance 
where  social  considerations  demand  that  the  city  interfere 
and  prevent  by  means  of  a  housing  code  the  shamefully 
crowded  living  conditions  which  landlords  find  it  profita- 
ble to  encourage  and  which  the  poor  families  are  financi- 
ally compelled  to  resort  to,  for  the  rent  demanded  comes 
within  the  possibilities  of  their  means,  although  it  yields 
enormous  profits  to  the  owners  of  the  property. 

Social  welfare  demands  the  elimination  of  insanitary,  in- 
decent tenements  and  the  establishment  of  minimum  stan- 
dards of  living  conditions  as  regards  light,  air,  sanitary 
conveniences,  number  of  people  per  room,  and  general  at- 
tractiveness of  surroundings.  Individual  desire  for  maxi- 
mum returns  are  not  to  be  taken  into  consideration  when 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  91 

weighed  against  such  social  consequences  as  the  satisfac- 
tion of  those  desires  entails  in  the  matter  of  the  housing 
conditions.  If  private  enterprise  is  unwilling  or  unable  to 
erect  decent  and  comfortable  dwellings  for  the  poorer 
classes  then  it  is  the  function  of  the  city  to  do  so,  and  not 
permit  their  exploitation  for  private  gain.  In  this  mat- 
ter of  the  housing  situation  American  cities  are  as  a  rule 
behind  many  European  cities  which  have  pretty  generally 
recognized  the  vast  importance  of  solving  this  problem. 
Of  course  the  fundamental  problem  of  securing  to  the  la- 
boring class  a  return  in  wages  which  will  enable  them  to 
satisfy  decently  their  fundamental  wants  in  the  matter 
of  housing  conditions  as  well  as  regards  education  recrea- 
tion, etc.,  involves  economic  considerations  that  lie  in  large 
part  outside  the  boundaries  and  jurisdiction  of  the  city 
and  for  which  therefore  the  city  cannot  be  held  responsi- 
ble. But  to  the  extent  that  the  city  can  secure  for  the 
laboring  class  the  essentials  of  decent  living  which  their 
wages  may  be  unable  to  procure  them  such  action  is  dic- 
tated by  considerations  both  of  justice  and  wisdom. 

A  consideration  of  considerable  significance  as  regards 
the  whole  matter  of  congestion  in  the  living  districts  of 
the  wage  earners  is  the  transportation  problem.  Workmen 
cannot  live  at  a  distance  from  their  place  of  employment 
unless  transportation  is  rapid  and  cheap.  Hence  if  there 
are  no  street  cars  that  connect  the  outlying  districts  of 
the  city  with  its  industrial  sections  it  means  that  the  work- 
men are  compelled  to  live  in  miserably  congested  condi- 
tions because  the  rent  value  of  land  in  the  center  of  the 
city  is  so  high  that  they  must  get  along  with  an  absolute 


92  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

minimum  of  space.  Furthermore,  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion even  when  it  exists  is  a  very  considerable  item  in  the 
wage  earners'  budget  and  may  prevent  the  reduction  of 
congestion  which  is  so  desirable  from  a  sanitary  and  social 
point  of  view.  The  city  should  therefore  require  reduced 
rates  for  persons  who  use  the  street  railways  daily  as  a 
means  of  getting  to  and  from  their  place  of  labor. 

Somewhat  the  same  considerations  apply  to  the  question 
of  decent  working  conditions.  The  hours  of  labor  and  the 
wages  paid  are  ordinarily  not  within  the  power  of  the  city 
to  alter  or  determine,  though  the  city  itself  as  an  employ- 
er of  labor  can  offer  an  instructive  example  of  what  just 
and  decent  treatment  of  employees  means.  But  in  the 
matter  of  sanitary  and  moral  conditions  surrounding  the 
places  of  work  the  city  can  exert  a  considerable  influence 
and  by  attacking  the  problem  of  unemployment  as  well 
as  by  providing  social  centers  and  other  means  of  recrea- 
tion and  social  intercourse  can  do  much  toward  making 
the  life  of  the  working  classes  more  bearable.  The  most 
important  considerations  concerning  the  sanitary  aspects 
of  the  places  of  work  are  much  the  same  as  those  that 
affect  proper  living  conditions,  namely  plenty  of  light  and 
air,  warmth  in  winter,  and  as  much  coolness  as  possible 
in  summer,  as  well  as  decent  sanitary  conveniences,  with 
dressing  and  rest  rooms,  separate  for  the  sexes.  Cities 
should  be  given  large  powers  to  deal  with  these  matters,  for 
they  are  of  the  greatest  importance  to  the  large  laboring 
population  of  every  city,  and  through  them  to  the  city 
as  a  whole. 

Not  only  should  the  conditions  under  which  the  work, 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  93 

particularly  factory  work  and  clerking  in  the  shops,  is 
done  be  as  healthful  and  as  pleasant  as  possible  but  fa- 
cilities for  recreation  should  be  as  ample  and  as  attractive 
as  can  be  furnished.  Private  employees  are  beginning  to 
realize  that  the  working  efficiency  of  the  individual  is 
greatly  affected  by  the  opportunities  enjoyed  by  the  em- 
ployees for  rest  and  recreation  and  for  that  reason  many 
of  them  are  not  only  voluntarily  shortening  the  hours  of 
work  in  many  cases  below  the  legal  requirement  or>in  the 
absence  of  legal  requirement  but  are  furnishing  at  their 
own  expense  libraries,  gymnasiums  and  social  rooms  and 
conducting  picnics  and  other  outings  on  holidays  for  their 
benefit.  But  this  far  sighted  attitude  is  not  by  any  means 
sufficiently  general  to  eliminate  the  need  of  community  ac- 
tivity in  this  regard  and  it  is  therefore  the  business  of  the 
city  to  see  that  the  laboring  element  which  is  unable  to  do 
more  than  barely  provide  for  the  necessities  of  life  should 
have  at  least  that  minimum  of  recreation  and  enjoyment 
without  expense  which  is  necessary  to  prevent  their  lives 
from  being  a  dull  round  of  routine  drudgery  without  the 
relief  which  the  members  of  the  propertied  classes  consider 
essential  to  real  living.  Under  this  head  would  come  some 
activities  that  have  been  touched  on  before,  some  that  will 
be  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  city  plan,  and  some 
that  do  not  present  other  than  purely  recreational  and  so- 
cial aspects.  Among  these  should  be  mentioned  public 
libraries,  museums  and  gardens,  parks  and  playgrounds 
so  situated  as  to  be  accessible  to  the  wage  earning  classes 
without  transportation  costs,  baths,  gymnasiums,  and  swim- 
ming pools,  public  exhibitions  and  concerts,  and  neighbor- 


94  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

hood  clubs  or  social  centers  to  encourage  gatherings  for  the 
cultivation  of  social  intercourse. 

A  problem  of  grave  difficulty  connected  with  the  con- 
dition of  the  working  classes  that  confronts  every  mu- 
nicipality to  a  greater  or  less  extent  is  the  problem  of 
unemployment.  In  one  sense  this  is  of  course  not  a  mu- 
nicipal problem  in  that  the  economic  conditions  which  re- 
sult in  the  throwing  of  numbers  of  wage  earners  out  of 
work  are  either  wholly  or  in  large  part  at  any  rate  not 
controllable  by  any  municipal  action,  or  by  any  governmen- 
tal action  for  that  matter.  But  if  the  causes  of  unemploy- 
ment are  not  municipal,  the  consequences  are  in  a  very 
real  sense  so,  for  the  want  and  suffering  that  result  must 
be  taken  care  of  by  the  city  and  its  inhabitants  in  some 
way  or  other.  Considerations  of  public  safety  to  say  noth- 
ing of  humanitarian  considerations  require  that  every- 
thing that  can  be  done  to  avoid  and  remedy  such  a  condi- 
tion should  be  done  by  the  city. 

There  are  two  phases  of  unemployment  that  should  be 
kept  in  mind  and  be  dealt  with  differently  by  the  city. 
First  there  is  the  continual  unemployment  due  to  lack 
of  proper  facilities  for  bringing  together  those  that  seek 
employment  and  those  that  seek  employees.  Private 
agencies  for  that  purpose  are  expensive  and  frequentty 
take  advantage  of  the  wage  earner  to  his  detriment.  Ex- 
perience has  shown  that  an  employment  bureau  conducted 
by  the  city  without  desire  of  profit  can  do  much  toward 
eliminating  loss  of  wages  due  to  a  failure  to  bring  the 
seekers  for  work  into  touch  with  those  desiring  workers. 
Then  there  is  the  serious  case  of  large  numbers  of  per- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT      ,        95 

sons,  normally  engaged  in  work,  thrown  out  of  employment 
because  of  a  panic  or  other  accompaniment  of  business  de- 
pression. It  would  frequently  be  possible  for  a  city  itself 
to  provide  work  for  the  ordinary  number  of  unemployed  in 
normal  times  by  assigning  them  to  day  labor  in  some  of  the 
city  public  service  departments.  But  the  extraordinary 
numbers  of  unemployed  that  result  from  a  period  of  busi- 
ness depression  can  be  taken  care  of  only  by  extraordinary 
measures  demanding  an  increased  number  of  employees 
engaged  directly  or  indirectly  in  work  for  the  city.  Such 
an  increased  demand  can  result  only  from  a  timely  increase 
in  the  building  undertakings  of  the  city.  But  as  such  in- 
creased activity  can  result  usually  only  from  a  bond  issue 
and  it  is  not  always  possible  to  issue  bonds  in  sufficient 
amounts  just  at  such  times  and  it  is  furthermore  always 
more  difficult  to  sell  them  in  times  of  financial  disturbance, 
the  city  must,  to  accomplish  the  purpose,  act  in  anticipa- 
tion of  such  emergencies.  This .  could  best  be  done  by 
creating  a  sinking  fund  out  of  the  general  revenues  or  by 
special  tax  and  letting  it  accumulate  for  the  purposes  men- 
tioned until  needed,  or  until  large  enough  to  take  care  also 
of  some  of  the  ordinary  sources  of  expenditure. 

The  problem  of  poor  relief  presents  one  of  the  most  per- 
plexing of  the  city's  difficulties  because  while  the  proper 
solution  of  the  question  is  greatly  affected  by  the  variety 
of  factors  involved,  the  failure  to  deal  with  it  properly  is 
certain  to  be  of  the  gravest  consequence  to  the  city.  Pov- 
erty and  crime  are  close  companions,  for  necessity  knows 
no  law  and  the  jails  have  no  horror  for  starving  persons. 
As  in  the  case  of  the  specific  problem  of  unemployment  so 


96  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

in  the  larger  problem  of  the  city's  indigent  and  pauper 
element  the  cause  is  only  slightly  traceable  to  conditions 
which  the  city  itself  can  prevent.  But  the  consequences, 
social  and  political,  of  pauperism,  are  consequences  which 
the  city  primarily  has  to  bear  and  it  therefore  becomes 
a  prime  duty  of  the  city  to  take  such  steps  as  it  can  to 
avoid  those  consequences.  Public  charity  or  poor  relief  is 
a  relatively  late  development  of  municipal  activity,  for 
until  comparatively  recent  times  that  matter  was  left 
largely  to  private  initiative  particularly  that  of  religious 
organizations.  To-day,  however,  the  governmental  sig- 
nificance of  a  systematic  treatment  of  the  poor  relief  ac- 
tivity has  come  to  be  pretty  generally  recognized  and  all 
progressive  cities  are  devoting  an  increasing  amount  of 
attention  to  the  problem. 

In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  problem  consists  in 
determining  who  are  really  in  need  of  public  support  and 
in  aiding  them  to  the  extent  and  in  a  manner  that  will 
not  tend  to  induce  them  to  cease  their  own  efforts  for  eco- 
nomic improvement  by  relying  upon  public  aid.  The  pau- 
perizing effect  of  indiscriminate  giving  to  those  who  seek 
assistance  is  too  well  known  to  require  comment.  But 
discriminating  giving  can  rarely  ever  be  attained  unless 
there  is  centralization  of  the  charitable  activities  in  a 
municipal  department  with  which  all  private  agencies  co- 
operate for  the  more  effective  accomplishment  of  the  com- 
mon purpose.  Every  city  therefore  should  have  a  profes- 
sionally trained  director  for  the  charitable  work  of  the 
city  who  should  approach  the  problem  from  a  scientific 
point  of  view  instead  of  from  the  point  of  view  of  ignorant 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  97 

sentimentalism.  Street  begging  and  begging  from  house 
to  house  should  then  be  forbidden  and  every  citizen  should 
be  informed  that  there  is  a  department  of  the  city  to  which 
all  applicants  for  assistance  can  be  sent  with  the  knowl- 
edge that  they  will  receive  the  treatment  their  case  de- 
mands and  which  the  public  interest  may  sanction.  Such  an 
arrangement  would  serve  the  double  purpose  of  discourag- 
ing impositions  on  the  charitable  impulses  of  the  citizens  and 
of  increasing  the  willingness  of  these  citizens  to  contribute 
towards  the  cause  of  public  charity  who  by  reason  of  repeat- 
ed frauds  upon  their  sympathy  had  come  to  turn  away  all 
cases  of  appeals,  worthy  and  unworthy  alike.  The  munici- 
palization  and  systematic  organization  of  poor  relief  work 
need  not  mean  the  elimination  of  the  personal  contact  and 
touch  of  the  individuals  with  cases  of  hardship  and  suffering 
which  tends  to  make  the  more  fortunate  members  of  the 
community  willing  and  anxious  to  help  those  less  fortunate, 
for  the  character  of  the  proper  kind  of  poor  relief  is  such 
as  to  demand  the  active  assistance  and  co-operation  of 
large  numbers  of  lay  citizens  working  for  the  department. 
The  last  subject  to  be  considered  under  the  head  of 
social  welfare  activities  of  the  city  is  that  of  corrections. 
The  whole  subject  of  penology  and  criminology  is  one 
which  must  in  its  larger  aspects  be  handled  by  the  state,  for 
it  is  the  state  that  defines  and  punishes  the  more  serious 
offences  against  society.  At  the  same  time  the  city  ordina- 
rily has  a  considerable  penal  jurisdiction  of  its  own  enforced 
by  its  own  police  officers  and  by  its  own  courts  and  penal  in- 
stitutions. It  is  important,  therefore,  that  within  its 
sphere  the  city  should  act  in  accordance  with  the  right 


98  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

principles  in  dealing  with  offenders.     Recent  times  have 
seen  a  marked  change  in  the  attitude  of  society  towards 
criminals  and  lesser  offenders.  Formerly  the  basic  idea  of  the 
system  of  public  punishment  seems  to  have  been  that  of  re- 
venge, an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.    Indeed 
in  times  past  the  punishment  of  the  criminal  was  consid- 
ered to  be  primarily  the  business  of  the  person  injured,  the 
government  rendering  him  aid  in  the  process.     But  even 
after  that  stage  was  passed  the  concept  at  the  basis  of  the 
treatment  of  the  criminal  was  that  society  had  been  injur- 
ed by  his  action  and  should  therefore  be  avenged  by  in- 
flicting a  punishment  upon  him  commensurate  with  the 
crime.     Besides  this  fundamental  idea  of  revenge  there 
was  also  and  still  is  to-day  to  a  considerable  extent  the  idea 
that   the   function   of   society   in   dealing   with   offenders 
against  the  law   should  be  preventive  in  that  criminals 
should   receive   such   treatment   as   would    discourage    all 
others  from  attempting  like  crimes.     Accordingly  it  was 
thought  that  the  more  severe  the  punishment  the  greater 
the  deterrent  effect  on  others  and  the  greater  the  security 
of  society.     In  former  centuries  therefore  it  was  the  rule 
that  even  petty  offences  were  punishable  by  death,  usually 
in  some  diabolical  way.    To  heighten  this  deterrent  influ- 
ence executions  were  held  in  public  and  were  popular  spec- 
tacles.   The  absurdity  of  such  a  system  of  punishment  was 
a  long  time  in  receiving  recognition  and  though  we  have  to- 
day generally  abandoned  the  practice  of  punishing  small 
offences  as  if  they  were  capital  crimes  and  have  ceased  to 
make  public  spectacles  of  executions,  we  still  adhere  to 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  99 

some  rather  mediaeval  conceptions  and  practices  in  our 
punishment  of  criminals. 

In  the  first  place  we  may  state  that  city  jails  are  fre- 
quently not  kept  in  the  condition  in  which  they  should 
be.  However  much  the  security  of  society  may  demand  the 
imprisonment  of  offenders  against  the  law  it  cannot  and 
does  not  demand  inhuman  treatment  of  the  offenders.  It 
has  no  right  to  undermine. the  health  of  its  wards,  and  jails 
should  therefore  be  kept  in  a  sanitary  condition.  In  the 
next  place  modern  sociology  recognizes  that  the  chief  if 
not  the  only  function  which  society  can  properly  assume 
with  regard  to  the  treatment  of  offenders  against  its  laws 
is  to  reform  the  offender  to  the  end  that  he  may  be  re- 
leased at  the  earliest  possible  date  as  a  useful  member  of 
society  again.  All  efforts  of  the  so-called  penal  activity  of 
government  should  therefore  have  in  mind  primarily  the 
reform  of  the  offender  rather  than  his  punishment.  If  the 
treatment  accorded  to  the  criminal  is  therefore  such  as 
merely  to  confirm  him  in  his  hostile  attitude  toward  so- 
ciety so  that  when  his  term  is  up  he  straightway  begins 
again  upon  a  career  of  crime,  the  fundamental  purpose  of 
our  penal  system  has  been  perverted.  Furthermore,  if  he 
is.  turned  out  after  serving  his  term  without  any  equipment 
for  earning  his  livelihood,  perhaps  because  of  his  health 
being  impaired  by  sanitary  conditions  in  the  jail,  he  is 
also  very  likely  to  return  to  illegitimate  undertakings. 

The  penal  institutions  should  therefore  offer  not  only 
healthful  living  conditions  but  also  opportunities  for  im- 
proving the  body,  mind,  and  morals  to  the  end  that  the  so- 
cial efficiency  of  the  individual  be  greater  if  possible  after 


100  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

his  release  than  before,  or  at  any  rate  not  less.  A  valua- 
ble experiment  in  this  direction  is  the  establishment  of  mu- 
nicipal farms  on  which  the  city  prisoners  can  be  engaged 
in  a  useful  and  healthful  occupation  and  at  the  same  time 
acquire  knowledge  which  will  be  of  economic  benefit  to 
them  after  they  are  released.  For  many  cases  the  parole 
system  is  a  valuable  instrument  of  improvement.  Segre- 
gation according  to  age  and  sex  as  well  as  to  the  character 
of  the  offense  committed  and  on  the  basis  of  first  or  re- 
peated offenders  is  also  essential  to  successful  reform 
work.  Finally  may  be  mentioned  the  importance  of  deal- 
ing with  juvenile  delinquency  not  as  crime  but  as  a  dis- 
tinct phenomenon  to  be  dealt  with  in  a  different  way.  It 
is  now  commonly  agreed  that  to  treat  children  who  com- 
mit crimes  and  misdemeanors  like  ordinary  criminals  re- 
sults in  a  great  many  cases  in  turning  into  confirmed  of- 
fenders many  persons  who  with  proper  watching  and  su- 
pervision could  be  led  to  see  the  error  of  their  ways,  ways 
which  are  frequently  the  result  rather  of  bad  home  influ- 
ences, training  and  surrounding  than  of  any  innate  perver- 
sity. Probation  officers  can  in  most  cases  do  more  toward 
reforming  a  youthful  first  offender  who  is  permitted  to 
carry  on  his  ordinary  activities  than  can  a  jailer  even  un- 
der the  most  favorable  conditions.  So  far  therefore  as  the 
city  has  judicial  jurisdiction  over  offenders  it  should  con- 
duct its  penal  system  on  the  principles  recognized  as  more 
effective  in  the  fundamental  problem  of  preventing  crime 
rather  than  on  the  time  honored  but  erroneous  doctrines 
that  have  usually  governed  the  penal  activity  of  govern- 
ments in  the  past. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  101 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

Does  the  city  have  a  housing  code  regulating  the  con- 
struction of  tenements  and  rent  houses,  as  to  light  and 
air,  sanitary  conveniences,  number  of  persons  who 
may  be  permitted  to  live  in  one  room,  etc.  ? 

What  is  the  condition  of  the  poorer  classes  as  to  dwell- 
ing places,  what  rents  are  charged,  and  what  returns 
do  houses  in  the  congested  and  poorer  districts  yield? 

Could  the  congestion  be  relieved  by  better  and  cheaper 
transportation  facilities?  Is  land  now  reached  by 
street  railways  held  at  high  prices  for  speculation? 

What  are  the  sanitary  conditions  under  which  wage 
earners  in  the  city,  particularly  women,  work? 

What  opportunities  for  recreation  and  rest  are  offered 
by  the  employers  ? 

How  does  the  city  as  an  employer  of  labor  compare  with 
other  employers  as  to  wages  paid,  hours  of  labor,  sani- 
tary condition  of  work  places,  recreational  facilities, 
etc? 

What  recreational  facilities  does  the  city  offer  for  the 
laboring  classes  particularly,  such  as  playgrounds  for 
the  children,  accessible  parks,  public  baths,  gymna- 
siums, neighborhood  houses,  etc. 

What  measures  does  the  city  adopt  to  deal  with  unem- 
ployment? Is  there  a  free  employment  agency?  Does 


102  SOCIAL  WELFARE 

the  city  enlarge  or  diminish  the  extent  of  its  public 
works,  undertakings  and  construction  in  time  of  finan- 
cial stringency? 

Is  there  a  special  authority  to  deal  with  poor  relief  and 
charity  in  the  city?  How  is  private  charity  correlated 
with  the  work  of  the  city?  How  does  the  city  deal  with 
street  and  house  begging? 

What  is  the  condition  of  the  city  jail?  Are  the  living 
conditions  sanitary? 

What  treatment  is  accorded  to  the  inmates?  What  ef- 
forts are  made  to  reform  them?  Are  offenders  seg- 
gregated  in  the  jails  according  to  age,  sex,  and  crimin- 
al records? 

Is  there  a  special  method  of  dealing  with  juvenile  of- 
fenders? 


IX. 

CITY  PLANNING. 

City  planning  is  one  of  the  most  recent  of  municipal 
functions  to  receive  recognition  in  this  country,  though  its 
importance  is  rapidly  coming  to  be  realized.  In  general 
it  may  be  said  that  the  purposes  of  systematic  city 
planning  are  or  should  be  two  fold,  esthetic  and  social. 
It  is  the  first  of  these  which  has  usually  been  emphasized 
by  those  interested  in  city  planning,  too  often  to  the  mini- 
mizing if  not  indeed  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other  feature. 
In  point  of  fact,  however,  the  social  value  of  a  proper  city 
plan  or  program  of  physical  development  is  of  much  more 
fundamental  importance  to  the  welfare  of  the  city  than  is 
the  rfiere  matter  of  physical  beauty,  tho  fortunately  the  two 
objects  are  not  only  easily  united  in  one  program  but  na- 
turally have  a  very  intimate  relation  with  each  other. 

Taking  up  first  the  possibilities  that  lie  in  a  systematic 
plan  of  city  development  for  the  improvement  of  social  con- 
ditions we  may  touch  briefly  on  such  matters  as  provisions 
for  parks  and  playgrounds,  proper  transportation  facili- 
ties and  housing  regulations.  The  greatest  social  ailment 
of  the  city  is  congestion  and  any  attempt  at  city  planning 
which  leaves  out  of  consideration  remedial  measures  di- 
rected at  that  ailment  fails  at  the  most  important  point. 
The  fundamental  causes  of  congestion  it  is  true  are  again, 
like  those  of  unemployment  and  pauperism,  with  which 

103 


104  CITY  PLANNING 

congestion  and  slums  are  intimately  connected,  to  be  found 
in  conditions  which  unfortunately  are  not  under  the  con- 
trol of  or  subject  to  regulation  by  the  city.  These  condi- 
tions are  long  hours  of  labor  and  poor  wages  and  it  has 
been  shown  that  normally  the  intensity  of  congestion  will 
vary  directly  with  the  length  of  the  working  day  and  in- 
versely with  the  wages  paid.  But  while  the  remedying  of 
these  fundamental  causal  conditions  is  outside  the  juris- 
diction of  the  city,  there  are  many  measures  which  the  city 
can  and  should  adopt  for  minimizing  the  unfortunate  re- 
sults of  congestion  and  in  some  measure  for  counteracting 
the  effect  of  the  conditions  named. 

First  among  these  may  be  considered  the  city  parks 
and  playgrounds.  The  value  from  an  esthetic  point 
of  view  of  beautiful  city  parks  is  of  course  obvious 
and  has  indeed  been  frequently  appreciated  at  least  in 
our  larger  American  cities.  But  the  sanitary  and  social 
significance  have  too  often  been  lost  sight  of,  in  tha*t 
beautiful  and  expensive  parks  have  been  located  at  a  dis- 
tance from  the  congested  portion  of  the  city  where  they 
neither  served  to  furnish  fresh  air  for  the  crowded  tene- 
ment dwellings  nor  could  be  used  for  outings  by  the  tene- 
ment dwellers  because  of  the  distance,  requiring  an  outlay 
in  street  car  fare  which  the  wage  earning  head  of  a  num- 
erous family  could  not  afford  to  expend.  In  realization 
of  this  feature  of  the  city's  open  places  the  practice  of 
having  a  large  number  of  small  and  easily  accessible  parks 
instead  of  one  or  two  splendid  but  from  this  point  of  view 
largely  useless  parks  is  coming  to  be  more  and  more  wide- 
ly adopted.  Of  equal  significance  is  the  playground  move- 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  105 

ment  which  at  relatively  small  expense  and  on  very  small 
plots  of  ground  causes  playgrounds  for  the  children  to  be 
located  in  the  congested  districts,  furnishing  both  breath- 
ing places  and  wholesome  recreation  places  to  take  the 
place  of  the  dirty,  noisy,  dangerous,  and  morally  harmful 
streets  and  back  alleys.  In  this  connection  should  be  men- 
tioned also  the  value  of  properly  located  and  conducted 
swimming  pools  and  bath  houses  which  serve  both  a  sani- 
tary and  recreational  object  of  considerable  importance. 

The  importance  of  rapid  and  cheap  transportation  facili- 
ties as  one  means  of  attacking  the  problem  of  congestion 
has  already  been  touched  upon  in  discussing  the  social  wel- 
fare activities  of  the  city.  It  is  only  necessary  to  point  out 
here,  therefore,  that  the  laying  out  of  proper  lines  of  trans- 
portation leading  from  the  industrial  portions  of  the  city 
to  outlying  sections  suitable  for  workmens'  dwellings 
should  form  an  important  part  of  every  city  planning  un- 
dertaking and  the  city  itself  should  see  to  it  that  such  out- 
lying sections  are  made  available  for  the  purpose  at  reas- 
onable prices.  The  transportation  problem  of  course  pre- 
sents other  matters  affecting  the  city  planning  activity, 
such  as  the  minimum  of  interference  with  other  traffic,  the 
sightliness  of  the  right  of  way,  by  requiring  underground 
wiring  and  parking  along  the  tracks,  the  proper  architec- 
tural treatment  of  elevated  railway  structures  if  required, 
and  the  beauty  of  all  transportation  stations  and  terminals. 

Building  regulations  and  their  significance  from  a  sani- 
tary and  social  point  of  view  have  already  been  considered 
in  connection  with  the  discussion  of  housing  conditions  and 
their  improvement  by  the  city.  These  regulations  dealt  chief- 


106  CITY  PLANNING 

ly  with  the  conditions  prevailing  as  to  light  and  air,  sani- 
tary conveniences,  and  insanitary  and  indecent  crowding 
into  rooms  and  apartments.  They  were  concerned,  there- 
fore, with  such  questions  as  the  height  of  buildings  in  re- 
lation to  the  width  of  the  street,  the  proportion  of  the 
area  of  each  lot  that  should  be  left  unbuilt  on,  the  size  and 
location  of  windows,  etc.,  all  of  which  of  course  has  also 
an  effect  on  the  appearance  of  the  building,  although  ad- 
ditional requirements  should  be  made  in  the  interests  of  a 
general  pleasing  appearance  for  tenements  from  the  out- 
side as  well  as  proper  arrangments  on  the  inside.  But 
there  is  another  important  point  to  be  kept  in  mind  by  the 
city  planning  body  which  has  a  bearing  on  the  social  as  well 
as  the  esthetic  side  of  building  regulations.  This  is  the 
matter  of  zoning  or  of  determining  distinct  districts  of 
the  city  for  different  kinds  of  building  purposes.  So  all 
factories  and  other  industrial  establishments  should  be  re- 
quired to  locate  in  certain  defined  zones  or  areas,  other 
areas  should  be  designated  as  business  districts,  still  others 
as  tenement  and  apartment  house  districts,  and  finally 
others  as  single  family  dwelling  districts.  In  this  way 
the  residence  sections  could  be  protected  against  the  noise, 
dirt,  and  congestion  existing  in  the  business  and  industri- 
al districts  and  an  important  blow  struck  at  the  problem 
of  congestion,  or  at  least  of  future  congestion.  This  zon- 
ing plan  is  not  a  new  thing  for  cities,  as  German  cities 
particularly  have  adopted  such  plans  of  development  for  a 
number  of  years  back  and  the  best  city  plans  now  being 
adopted  in  this  country  make  provisions  for  the  same  gen- 
eral kind  of  scheme. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  107 

Leaving  now  the  social  objects  to  be  attained  by  city 
planning  we  may  consider  briefly  the  more  purely  esthetic 
or  artistic  objects  to  be  sought  after,  though  here  again 
other  considerations  must  be  taken  into  account,  such  as 
convenience  and  cost  if  a  valuable  and  practicable  plan  is 
to  be  involved.  First  we  may  take  up  what  is  sometimes 
regarded  as  the  principal  problem  of  the  city  plan,  namely 
the  arrangement  of  the  streets.  In  this  regard  utility  and 
convenience  should  be  the  prime  considerations  and  beauty 
next.  The  prime  purpose  of  streets  is  not  to  furnish  beauty 
but  to  afford  facilities  for  intercommunication  and  traffic, 
therefore  a  good  city  plan  must  attempt  to  offer  the  most 
convenient  arrangement  of  streets  for  that  purpose,  con- 
sistent with  other  considerations,  including  esthetic  ones 
also.  Here,  again,  fortunately,  the  most  useful  arrange- 
ments proves  to  be  also  the  most  pleasing  from  an  artistic 
standpoint,  hence  the  problem  is  relatively  simple.  The 
characteristic  plan  of  laying  out  streets  in  American  cities 
is  the  regular  rectangular  plan  which  makes  the  city  look 
like  an  immense  checkerboard.  This  plan  is  most  objec- 
tionable from  the  point  of  view  of  traffic  and  transporta- 
tion for  it  makes  it  very  inconvenient  to  go  diagonally 
across  the  city,  requiring  one  to  travel  along  the  two  sides 
of  a  right  angle  triangle  instead  of  along  the  hypothenuse. 
The  plan  has  the  advantage  of  making  it  easy  to  find  ones 
way  because  all  streets  are  straight  and  houses  can  be 
numbered  conveniently  with  reference  to  intersecting 
streets.  Furthermore  it  permits  of  the  most  complete  use 
for  building  purposes  of  the  land  not  used  for  streets,  al- 
though we  shall  see  that  one  of  the  advantages  of  the  plan 


108  CITY  PLANNING 

suggested  later  on  is  that  it  results  in  the  creation  of  many 
small  plots  of  land  unsuitable  for  buildings  which  can  be 
turned  into  small  parklets  or  flower  gardens  to  great  ad- 
vantage. 

But  the  disadvantages  of  the  pure  checker  board  plan 
outweigh  all  possible  advantages  from  the  point  of  view  of 
facility  of  intercommunication  and  in  addition  to  that  are 
by  reason  of  the  monotony  of  the  effect  produced  little 
adapted  to  effective  landscape  architecture.  But  it  may 
well  be  retained  as  the  ground  work  of  the  city  plan  be- 
cause of  its  economical  use  of  the  street  areas  and  because 
of  the  ease  of  numbering  and  finding  of  streets  and  houses. 
The  defect  of  not  affording  diagonal  passage  way  across 
the  city  can  easily  be  overcome  by  providing  for  a  series  of 
diagonal  thoroughfares  to  serve  as  main  highways  for 
getting  across  the  city  in  diagonal  directions.  Such  a  plan 
of  diagonal  streets  radiating  out  from  one  or  more  centers 
of  traffic  would  also  serve  to  relieve  the  monotony  of  the 
checker  board  and  would  result  in  the  creation  of  little 
triangular  areas  at  the  street  intersections  which  would  af- 
ford splendid  opportunities  for  little  parks  with  sculpture, 
ornamental  fountains  and  flower  beds.  Another  variation 
in  the  checker  board  plan  which  serves  convenience  of  in- 
tercourse also  but  has  chiefly  artistic  merit  is  the  use  of 
one  or  more  circle  boulevards  whose  center  would  be  the 
principal  civic  center,  that  is,  group  of  public  buildings 
of  the  community.  This  feature  of  street  planning  orig- 
ated  in  continental  European  cities  where  the  lines  of  the 
old  city  walls  and  fortifications  offered  convenient  lines  for 
broad  streets  because  the  land  in  question  had  not  been 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  109 

built  up  in  business  blocks.  The  architectural  effects  ob- 
tainable by  such  a  system  of  concentric  circular  boule- 
vards are  splendid. 

These  suggestions  with  regard  to  the  laying  out  of  city 
streets  are  based  on  the  implied  assumption  that  city  plan- 
ning had  been  given  attention  prior  to  the  growth  of  the 
city  and  that  its  development  could  be  directed  along  these 
lines.  This  is  not  true  of  course  of  any  of  the  older  and  larg- 
er cities.  They  all  developed,  with  very  few  exceptions,  be- 
fore the  importance  of  city  planning  even  from  an  esthetic 
point  of  view  had  been  realized  and  the  plan  of  the  streets 
shows  therefore  few  or  none  of  the  desirable  features  men- 
tioned. The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  points  to  be  noted 
a  little  later  with  regard  to  width  of  streets,  location  of 
public  buildings,  etc.  The  introduction  of  all  these  feat- 
ures now  into  the  built  up  portions  of  these  cities  would 
therefore  involve  a  very  considerable  if  not  a  prohibitive 
expense.  A  city  planning  program  for  the  established 
business  and  residence  sections  of  a  city  should  therefore 
attempt  to  improve  the  situation  as  far  as  possible  without 
involving  the  tearing  down  of  too  many  valuable  buildings 
or  the  undue  disturbances  of  established  routes  of  com- 
munication. For  all  such  portions  of  cities  a  study  of  the 
natural  arteries  of  communication  should  be  made,  these 
should  be  widened  as  much  as  need  be  and  all  traffic  de- 
flected as  far  as  possible  to  such  streets  while  other  streets 
be  limited  to  pleasure  travel.  This  would  serve  not  only 
to  afford  opportunities  for  street  beautification  and  im- 
provement, but  would  relieve  congestion  of  traffic  and 
simplify  the  paving  problem  which  is  affected  primarily 


110  CITY  PLANNING 

by  considerations  of  the  kind  and  amount  of  traffic  to  be 
borne  by  the  streets. 

At  the  same  time  while  it  is  true  that  it  is  much  more  ex- 
pensive to  replan  a  city  than  to  plan  it  in  the  first  place 
and  the  possibility  of  a  systematic  comprehensive  plan  is 
greatly  diminished  if  it  is  not  adopted  until  after  the  city 
has  attained  a  considerable  growth,  yet  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  some  aspects  of  city  planning  are  so  important 
to  the  welfare  of  the  city,  particularly  the  social  aspects, 
that  the  question  of  expense  takes  a  subordinate  place  com- 
pared with  the  need  of  making  the  required  changes.  Many 
cities  in  this  country  as  well  in  Europe  have  found  it 
economical  to  spend  millions  of  dollars  in  replanning 
their  streets  for  the  purpose  of  improving  housing  and  liv- 
ing conditions  and  for  beautifying  the  city.  The  very 
costliness  of  such  improvement  may  furthermore  prove 
a  helpful  lesson  for  smaller  cities  in  attacking  the  problem 
of  planning  their  development  early  while  it  is  yet  a  simple 
matter,  and  for  the  larger  cities  in  controlling  the  plan- 
ning of  new  additions  in  the  unbuilt  territory  near  the  city 
which  will  later  become  a  part  thereof.  It  should  also  be 
emphasized  here  that  while  the  general  considerations 
mentioned  with  regard  to  the  laying  out  of  streets  and  the 
other  problems  of  city  planning  have  in  a  sense  a  universal 
application,  their  local  application  in  a  given  city  will  be 
greatly  affected  not  only  by  the  past  development  of  the 
city  as  above  shown,  but  also  by  the  topography  and  the  cli- 
matic conditions  of  the  individual  city.  A  local  study  by  a 
competent  city  planner  should  therefore  always  precede  any 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  111 

action  to  be  taken  with  regard  to  the  adoption  of  a  gen- 
eral line  of  development. 

The  width  of  streets  is  another  important  considera- 
tion to  be  kept  in  mind  in  connection  with  the  adoption 
of  a  city  plan.  It  is  a  not  uncommon  notion  that  wide  streets 
are  necessarily  desirable  both  from  the  point  of  view  of 
convenience  and  of  beauty,  and  that  therefore  all  streets 
should  be  made  as  wide  as  possible.  This  is  a  mistaken 
notion.  Streets  are,  as  has  been  said,  primarily  arteries 
of  traffic.  They  should  therefore  be  wide  enough  to  ac- 
commodate conveniently  the  traffic  that  is  likely  to  use 
them,  and  that  width  will  vary  with  different  streets.  If 
streets  are  made  any  wider  than  is  necessary  for  their 
fundamental  purpose  it  results  in  unnecessary  expense  to 
the  abutting  property  for  paving  and  to  the  city  for  repair- 
ing and  cleaning,  while  at  the  same  time  it  unnecessarily 
diminishes  the  amount  of  space  available  for  building  pur- 
poses. Of  course,  the  street  should  be  wide  enough  in  any 
case  to  admit  enough  light  and  air  to  the  houses  likely  to 
be  built  on  it  and  certain  of  the  main  streets  and  boule- 
vards should,  for  architectural  effects,  be  made  wider  than 
is  absolutely  necessary  for  traffic  purposes,  but  it  is  well 
to  point  out  that  streets  can  and  not  infrequently  are  too 
wide  as  well  as  too  narrow.  A  convenient  and  artistic  way 
of  securing  width  in  the  street  without  the  resulting  incon- 
venience of  a  wide  expanse  to  be  paved  and  kept  in  repair 
and  clean,  is  to  park  the  center  third  of  the  street  with  lawn 
and  flowers,  leaving  a  traffic  way  on  either  side  wide  enough 
to  accommodate  the  normal  travel. 

There  are  many  other  considerations  that  might  be  men- 


112  CITY  PLANNING 

tioned  with  regard  to  the  beauty  of  the  streets,  such  as  the 
need  of  shade  trees,  ornamental  lighting,  harmony  of  ar- 
chitecture, etc.,  but  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  further 
detail.  One  very  important  matter,  however,  should  be 
mentioned  because  it  is  one  in  which  almost  all  American 
cities,  even  the  largest  and  the  most  progressive,  fail.  That 
is  the  matter  of  bill  boards  and  other  street  advertisements. 
Many  a  beautiful  street  or  boulevard  and  many  places  of 
natural  beauty  in  or  near  bur  cities  are  marred  by  the  ill- 
advised  advertising  mania.  Cities  should  be  given  the  wid- 
est possible  powers  to  remedy  this  evil,  for  it  makes  civic 
beauty  almost  an  impossibility.  Offenses  to  the  eye  are 
just  as  objectionable,  and  to  many  people  more  so,  as  are 
offenses  to  the  ear  and  nose.  Objectionable  sounds  and 
smells  can  usually  be  eliminated  at  least  to  the  extent  that 
they  are  unnecessary,  and  in  that  sense  this  mania  of  street 
advertising /is  certainly  unnecessary.  So  long  as  a  few 
manufacturers  or  sellers  make  use  of  it  others  feel  com- 
pelled by  competition  to  do  the  same,  but  if  it  were  for- 
bidden to  all  none  would  suffer  except  the  persons  who  sell 
or  rent  the  space  for  commercial  gain  to  the  destruction  of 
the  beauty  of  their  city. 

Finally,  we  may  touch  briefly  on  the  importance  of  lo- 
cating public  buildings  in  such  a  way  as  to  serve  artistic 
purposes  as  well  as  to  be  conveniently  accessible.  "Civic 
center"  has  come  to  be  used  to  designate  the  collection  or 
grouping  of  the  public  buildings  of  the  city  for  architectural 
effects.  This  plan,  like  the  other  features  of  civic  beauty, 
has  in  mind  also  the  development  of  civic  pride  which  comes 
from  seeing  public  buildings  of  effective  architecture 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  113 

grouped  in  an  artistic  way  to  exemplify  the  spirit  of  the 
city  and  its  importance  and  achievements.  In  the  style  of 
architecture  and  location  of  its  own  buildings  the  city,  of 
course,  has  entire  say,  but  it  should  also  make  every  effort 
to  secure  the  co-operation  of  the  federal  government  in  the 
erection  of  its  postoffices  and  other  buildings,  and  of  the 
state  and  county  in  the  erection  of  their  buildings  within 
the  city.  With  such  co-operation  between  the  various  gov- 
ernmental agencies  it  would  be  possible  for  every  city,  even 
the  smallest,  to  have  a  civic  center  proportionate  to  its  size 
and  importance  which  could  be  made  a  beauty  spot  to  which 
citizens  would  point  with  pride.  If  then,  in  addition,  an- 
other common  sore  spot  in  the  city,  the  railway  station, 
were  required  to  be  made  as  attractive  as  possible,  the  im- 
provement in  the  physical  aspect  of  the  ordinary  city  would 
be  phenomenal.  For  this  purpose  every  city  should  have  an 
art  commission,  composed  of  lay  citizens,  serving  without 
pay,  to  pass  on  and  approve  every  building  erected  by  the 
city  or  by  public  service  corporations  in  the  city,  and  to 
approve  all  monuments  erected  in  public  squares  by  or  for 
the  city,  which  commission  could  act  in  the  general  capacity 
of  a  city  planning  commission,  assisted  in  both  functions  by 
a  professional  man  who  had  made  a  special  study  of  land- 
scape architecture  and  city  planning 


114  CITY  PLANNING 


QUESTION  SHEET  ON  CITY  PLANNING 

How  many  acres  of  parks  are  in  the  city?  Are  they  with- 
in easy  walking  distance  of  the  tenement  or  congested 
working  districts  of  the  city? 

What  provision  does  the  city  make  for  playgrounds,  bath 
houses  and  swimming  pools,  or  gymnasiums  ? 

Has  the  city  established  zones  for  the  different  kinds  of 
structures  in  the  city?  Are  workmen's  dwellings 
crowded  in  among  industrial  plants,  factories  and  sweat 
shops? 

Have  any  steps  been  taken  toward  the  adoption  and  fol- 
lowing of  a  systematic  city  plan  ?  Is  there  a  city  plan- 
ning or  city  art  commission  ? 

Are  the  streets  as  now  laid  out  best  adapted  to  the  exist- 
ing and  future  traffic  conditions  ?  Are  shade  trees  pro- 
vided by  the  city  or  required  of  property  owners? 

What  abuses  exist  with  regard  to  the  bill  board  evil? 
What  steps  if  any  are  taken  to  remedy  this  evil  ? 

What  is  the  artistic  value  of  the  public  buildings  in  the 
city;  city  hall,  jail,  schools,  etc.,  and  of  the  federal  and 
county  buildings? 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  115 


SELECTED  BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON  MUNICIPAL 
FUNCTIONS.* 

GENERAL. 

BEARD,  CHARLES  A.,  American  City  Government  (New  York, 

The  Century  Company,  112),  $2.00. 
BRUERE,  HENRY,  The  New  City  Government  (New  York, 

D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1912),  $1.50. 
ZUEBLIN,  CHARLES,  American  Municipal  Progress    (New 

York,  The  Macmillan  Company,  new  and  revised  edition, 

1914),  $1.25. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH. 

BLAIR,  THOMAS  S.,  Public  Hygiene    (Boston,  Richard  G. 

Badger,  2  volumes,  1911),  $10.00. 
GODFREY,  HOLLIS,  The  Health  of  the  City  (Boston,  Houghton 

Mifflin  Co.,  1910),  $1.25. 
JENSEN,  CARL  OLUF,  Essentials  of  Milk  Hygiene,  translated 

by  Leonard  Pearson  (Philadelphia,  J.  B.  Lippincott  Co., 

second  edition,  1909),  $2.00. 
SPARGO,  JOHN,  The  Common  Sense  of  the  Milk  Question 

(New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1908),  $1.50. 
SOPER,   GEORGE  A.,   Modern  Methods   of  Street   Cleaning 

(New  York,  McGraw-Hill  Book  Co.,  formerly  Engineer- 
ing News  Publishing  Co.,  1909),  $3.00. 


*Prepared  by   Edward  T.    Paxton,   Assistant  in   the   Bureau   of   Municipal   Research 
and  Reference. 


116  A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT 

HOWARD,  L.  O.,  The  House  Fly — Disease  Carrier  (New 
York,  F.  A.  Stokes  Co.,  1911),  $1.60. 

DOTY,  ALVAH  H.,  The  Mosquito — Its  Relation  to  Disease 
and  Its  Extermination  (New  York,  D.  Appleton  &  Co., 
1912),  75s. 

AINGE,  THOMAS  S.,  The  Sanitary  Sewerage  of  Buildings 
(Chicago,  Domestic  Engineering,  1908),  $1.50. 

MORSE,  WILLIAM  F.,  The  Collection  and  Disposal  of  Mu- 
nicipal Waste  (New  York,  Municipal  Journal  and  Engi- 
neer, 1909),  $5.00. 

FULLER,  GEORGE  W.,  Seivage  Disposal  (New  York,  McGraw- 
Hill  Book  Co.,  1912) ,  $6.00. 

KINNECUT  (L.  P.),  WINSLOW  (C.-E.  A.),  and  PRATT 
(R.  W.),  Sewage  Disposal  (New  York,  John  Wiley  & 
Sons,  1910),  $3.00. 

CORNELL,  WALTER  S.,  Health  and  Medical  Inspection  of 
School  Children  (Philadelphia,  F.  A.  Davis  Co.,  1912), 
$3.00. 

GULICK  (L.  H.)  and  AYRES  (L.  P.),  Medical  Inspection  of 
.  .Schools  (New  York,  Survey  Associates,  revised  edition, 
1913),  $1.50. 

KERR  (J.  W.  and  MOLL  (A.  A.),  Organization,  Poivers,  and 
Duties  of  Health  Authorities  (Washington,  Government 
Printing  Office;  U.  S.  Public  Health  Bulletin  No.  54; 
sold  from  the  office  of  the  Superintendent  of  Documents, 
Washington,  D.  C.;  1912),  25c. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  117 

PUBLIC  SAFETY. 

FULD,  LEONARD  FELIX,  Police  Administration  (New  York, 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1910),  $3.00. 

McAooo,  WILLIAM,  Guarding  a  Great  City  (New  York, 
Harper  &  Brothers,  1906),  $2.00. 

PUBLIC  EDUCATION. 

MONROE,  PAUL,  Text  Book  in  the  History  of  Education 
(New  York,  The  Macmillan  Company,  1905),  $1.90. 

PERRY,  CLARENCE  ARTHUR,  Wider  Use  of  the  School  Plant 
(New  York,  Survey  Associates,  formerly  Charities  Publi- 
cation Committee,  1910),  $1.25. 

SNEDDEN,  DAVID  S.,  The  Problem  of  Vocational  Education 
(Boston,  Houghton  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1910),  35c. 

PUBLIC  MORALS. 

SELIGMAN,  EDWIN  R.  A.,  The  Social  Evil  (New  York,  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons;  report  on  conditions  in  New  York  City, 
prepared  in  1902  under  the  direction  of  the  Committee  of 
Fifteen,  second  edition,  revised  and  enlarged;  1912), 
$1.75. 

VICE  COMMISSION  OF  CHICAGO,  The  Social  evil  in  Chicago 
(Chicago,  republished  by  the  Vice  Commission  of  Chicago 
for  distribution  by  the  American  Vigilance  Association, 
1911). 


118  A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT 

SOCIAL  WELFARE. 

VEILLER,  LAWRENCE,  Housing  Reform  (New  York,  Survey 
Associates,  1914),  $1.25. 


-,   A   Model  Housing   Law    (New   York. 


Survey  Associates,  1914) ,  $2.00. 

NATIONAL  CONFERENCE  ON  HOUSING,  Housing  Problems  in 
America  (Cincinnati;  published  by  the  Conference;  com- 
prises the  proceedings  of  the  annual  conference  or  con- 
vention; a  volume  is  issued  each  year,  beginning  1911), 
$2.00  each. 

BUTLER,  ELIZABETH  BEARDSLEY,  Women  and  the  Trades 
(New  York,  Survey  Associates,  1909),  $1.50. 

KELLOG,  PAUL  U.  (editor),  Wage-Earning  Pittsburgh  (New 
York,  Survey  Associates,  1914) ,  $2.50. 

WARD,  EDWARD  J.,  The  Social  Center  (New  York,  D.  Apple- 
ton  &  Co.,  1913),  $1.50. 

HUNTER,  ROBERT,  Poverty  (New  York,  The  Macmillan 
Company,  1912),  $1.25. 

HENDERSON,  CHARLES  R.,  Preventive  Agencies  and  Methods 
(New  York,  Survey  Associates,  formerly  Charities  Publi- 
cation Committee ;  volume  3  of  the  Correction  and  Preven- 
tion Series,  prepared  for  the  Eighth  International  Prison 
Congress;  1910),  $2.50. 


A  HANDBOOK  OF  Civic  IMPROVEMENT  119 

CITY  PLANNING  AND  RECREATION. 

/  ROBINSON,  CHARLES  MULFORD,  Improvement  of  Towns  and 
Cities  (New  York,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  new  edition,  re- 
vised and  enlarged,  1913),  $1.25. 


nam's  Sons),  $3.00. 


-,  Modern  Civic  Art  (New  York,  G.  P.  Put- 


,The  Width  and  Arrangement  of  Streets 

(New  York,  McGraw-Hill  Book  Co.,  1911),  $2.00. 

NOLEN,  JOHN,  Replanning  Small  Cities  (New  York,  B.  W. 
Huebsch,  1911),  $2.50. 

NATIONAL  CONFERENCE  ON  CITY  PLANNING,  Proceedings  of 
the  Annual  Conference  (Boston;  published  by  the  Confer- 
ence; a  volume  is  issued  each  year,  beginning  1909) .  $1.50 
each. 

LELAND,  ARTHUR  and  LORNA,  Playground  Technique  and 
Playcraft  (New  York,  Doubleday  Page  &  Co.,  1910), 
$2.50. 

MERO,  EVERETT  B.,  American  Playgrounds  (New  York, 
Baker  &  Taylor  Co.,  second  edition,  1910),  $2.00. 


In  keeping  abreast  of  current  progress  in  municipal  func- 
tions, The  American  City  (New  York;  monthly;  $2.00  a 
year),  is  just  as  indispensable  as  is  the  National  Municipal 
Review  (Philadelphia;  quarterly;  $5.00  a  year),  in  keeping 
abreast  of  current  thought  in  municipal  government. 


THIS 


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